Broken Pieces
by Aulizia
Summary: The Winter Soldier knows he's broken. But he might have found a mechanic who can fix him. Trouble is… he's not the only one in pieces. Bucky/OC. Story follows on from the end of CA: TWS.
1. Chapter 1

Nothing belongs to me. I just wanted to play with Marvel's toys.

Yes, there's an OC in here. Forgive me?

NB: Written in UK-English, but if you see any glaring errors where I use British terms instead of US ones please let me know and I'll change them. :)

Happy reading!

* * *

**Broken Pieces**

A bomb had gone off inside his head. Lights flashed behind his eyes. Red, white and blue. A constant roaring filled his ears. The sounds of battle from a lifetime ago or the sounds from a lifetime of battle?

Given the mess he was in, it wasn't surprising that it took less than twenty minutes for two armed HYDRA personnel to find him. He didn't want to get into the back of the fully enclosed black van. At least, he didn't think he wanted to, but he wasn't too good at thinking for himself. All those endless years of conditioning were hard to throw off.

Something somewhere inside him was screaming. But his body stepped inside the vehicle without a fight. Sat down. Tried very hard to hold it together. Hold him together. His mind was a shattered glass, at any moment it was liable to fall to pieces.

The van's engine rumbled to life. An added sensation that he could have done without, and then he heard the driver's voice from the cab in front, without fully registering any of the ensuing words.

"Who's she?"

"Amy Thomas. S.H.I.E.L.D. engineer. She's on Kraus's list."

"Throw her in the back."

He didn't turn his head as a woman was dragged, kicking, onto the seat opposite him by another HYDRA operative. Her struggle was futile and only served to earn her a punch in the face that split her bottom lip. She gave up fighting after that and the vehicle finally started to move.

Pain.

Pain began to blossom in every inch of his body, as the rush of adrenaline in his enhanced cells finally began to subside. The worst was his right arm, dislocated, maybe broken. But pain was familiar. It didn't have much power to bother him anymore. There were worse things than pain haunting his thoughts at present. That man's face. _Finish it._

"You okay?"

_James Buchanan Barnes._ He didn't have a name. So it couldn't possibly belong to him. _Bucky._ But maybe, just maybe even he had had one once? _End of the line._

"Hey, you okay?"

He hadn't heard the woman's question, at least, he hadn't realised it was addressed to him, but every muscle in his body tensed to attack when she nudged the toe of her shoe against his boot. He looked up. Ready to kill. A pair of blue eyes looked straight back. A shock jolted through him. Blue. Why blue? His chest rose. Fell. He couldn't breathe. He watched her eyes study his face before making a tell-tale flick over his left arm.

"You're the guy we've been hearing about, right? The ghost who killed Director Fury?"

Yes. He felt like a ghost. Hardly holding onto the slivers of his conscious mind. He saw her take in the armed guards that were positioned on either side of him. She shot a scornful smile in his direction, or tried to, but only half of her bloodied mouth seemed to want to cooperate, so it came off as less of a sneer than she had probably planned.

"I thought you'd be in charge."

"Shut up."

The guard who had dragged her into the back of the van in the first place drew his baton. The weapon buzzed, blue and menacing. The other two guards already had their guns drawn, and although they were pointed at him it would only take a second to alter their target.

"I thought you wanted me to talk?"

He watched the guard hit the woman in the stomach with enough force to rock the van. She choked up a mouthful of blood and slumped forward in her seat before sliding onto the floor.

He wasn't sitting in the back of a cramped metal van anymore. He was in a different place. A different time. It wasn't a small woman being beaten in front of him, but a small man. A man he would die to protect.

He wasn't conscious of grabbing the guard by the throat, but a ricochet of bullets off his metal arm summoned him back to the present. Machinery whirred. His grip tightened. Something snapped. He threw the man's lifeless body at the gunman on his left, then kicked out at the other gunman hard enough to send him crashing through the back doors of the vehicle.

A bullet from the second man's own gun dispatched the final HYDRA soldier. A shot from the front of the vehicle clipped his side, but a shower of return fire put an end to that retaliation.

"D'you just shoot the driver?"

The woman groaned. She was still on the floor, alive, just about.

It seemed to take all the effort in the world for her to lift her head. They stared at each other, as the van picked up speed. Neither one moved.

"This is the part where you kill me, right?"

Right.

He hadn't actually realised he was already pointing the gun at her head, but his finger tightened on the trigger.

Wrong?

She wasn't his mission. She wasn't a threat. He didn't need to kill her. He could make a different choice. But she kept looking at him with those hateful blue eyes. The man had blue eyes. He holstered the gun. He only had one arm that he could rely on at the moment and he had just decided that he was going to need it.

She didn't fight him when he grabbed her. Perhaps she was too terrified. Perhaps too injured. He hardly felt her weight as he tossed her over his shoulder and walked to the gaping hole where the back door of the van had been.

They were travelling at maybe sixty miles an hour when he jumped.

He wanted to use the speed of the vehicle, to work with the momentum and not against it, but he couldn't do any of that with a passenger, so he absorbed the full shock of impact with his legs. More pain. Barely noted. They were on a freeway. He ran between the speeding cars, jumped the barrier at the edge of the road and slid out of sight down the steep grass verge on the other side. Behind him, somewhere, the HYDRA van crashed and exploded.

He dropped the woman on the ground. She lay there for a moment, stunned and winded, before gingerly easing herself into a sitting position. She made no motion to stand. He had already started to leave. He didn't know where he was going, but it slowly dawned on him that it wasn't going to be back to base.

"Thank you."

He stopped. Hesitated. Turned around.

"What?"

"Thank you?" she said. She looked a little uncertain, and a lot as though she wished she had kept her mouth shut and he had kept on walking. She flinched under the weight of his gaze. "You didn't have to save me, but you did. So, thank you."

He didn't remember ever being thanked for anything ever before so three thank yous in under twenty seconds was a little overwhelming. She touched her cut lip with the tip of her tongue, gaze slanting nervously to the side.

"Did you kill the Captain?"

"Who?"

"Captain Rogers. I'm assuming he's the only guy who could leave you looking like that."

She nodded at his battered, bloodied, broken body, but he barely noticed.

The name stuck in his brain like a splinter.

"What did you call him?"

"Captain Rogers. Steve Rogers." She waited for something, but didn't receive it. "You know, Captain America?"

Silence fell between them again. The traffic roared away out of sight. Somewhere in the distance, sirens sounded. She studied him as though he were a specimen under a microscope.

"No."

"No?"

"No. I didn't kill him."

"Oh. Good." She tried a weak smile, but didn't have very much more luck than the first time she'd attempted to force her lips to cooperate. "Listen, can I-" she paused, but then pressed on "-can I help you fix your shoulder?"

He scowled down at her, daring her to continue.

"Not your- I meant-" She cleared her throat. "It's dislocated, isn't it? I don't suppose you can just wander into the emergency room."

"I don't need your help."

"I gathered. I'm offering it all the same."

"Why?"

She stared down at her lap.

"Because I owe you. And you didn't kill the Captain. And after today I'm not sure if I know what's right or wrong anymore, but I do know there are more of those men out there and I'm pretty sure they'll be coming after you."

None of that made sense to him, but he sat down on the grass beside her. She eyed him hesitantly.

"So, that's a yes?" she asked.

He didn't see the point in answering. Instead, he gave her a look and tried to determine if this was a trap – but he was the one with the gun and the metal arm. He was the walking weapon. She barely looked like she was hanging on to consciousness – so he decided to wait and see what happened next before she lost that battle and he lost her help.

She winced and gritted her teeth as she got into position beside him. He guessed she had at least a few fractured ribs, if not some internal bleeding, probably a concussion too. He didn't know if she was going to have the strength left in her fragile body to snap his shoulder back into its socket.

And then she surprised him completely.

"Sorry. I think this is going to hurt," she said, catching hold of his wrist in both of her hands.

The sensation of touch was curious. So, as she bent her legs to give herself some leverage, and as she lent her full weight back, pulling his arm slowly straight, he tried very hard to concentrate on the unfamiliar feeling of warm human skin and not the shooting pain that had every cell in his body screaming.

There was a grinding of bone on bone, followed by a blissful pop, and then the roaring pain lessened to a dull throb. He stood up, flexed his fingers and tested the movement of his arm.

"Better?" she asked. Well, it was more of a wheeze. One of her own arms was wrapped around her chest as she took a series of fast shallow breaths before a sequence of hacking coughs wracked her body.

"Yes."

He watched her, waited, realised he was waiting for an order, which darkened the frown that he was already wearing. Slowly, uncertainly, he offered her his hand. She stared back at him, just as guarded, and then, incredibly, she reached for him. He pulled her to her feet. She was about half a head shorter than he was, at least that was the impression he got in the millisecond that she remained standing. The moment she tried it unaided her legs gave out and she ended up on the floor again.

"You know, I think I'm good down here."

She moved carefully, shifting off her knees and onto her back.

He kept watching her, unsure of what to do.

Leave.

Obviously.

But… that faint flicker of feeling returned… the one he'd felt in the back of the van when he'd killed the guard for beating her… there was a shard of his mind that was telling him he wasn't the kind of man who walked away and left someone sitting hurt in the dirt.

He crushed that thought under the memory of a dozen merciless assassinations, as the woman reached into the pocket of her pants and pulled out a cell phone.

"I'll give you five minutes until I call for help," she said.

"Three."

"What?"

"Three minutes. You'll be unconscious in five."

He waited just long enough for her to give her head one small nod of understanding, and then he was gone.


	2. Chapter 2

Amy grabbed an old rag from the workbench and used it to wipe the car oil off her hands. Time for a break. She eased a crick out of her neck and rubbed away a nagging ache in her hip as she walked from the garage into her single story house.

She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror that hung in the hall as she passed, but she certainly didn't stop to admire it. Her face was a combination of purples and yellows today. Real pretty. But it was only a fortnight since her world had ended. For what, the third time, was it? She was starting to lose track.

She re-tied her hair in its messy ponytail as she carried on into the kitchen to get something to drink. Much too large a kitchen really, for just one person who wasn't much of a cook. She grabbed a glass that sat drying by the sink and filled it from a carton of orange in the fridge. She took a long, slow drink to quench her thirst and then turned around to head back outside.

She might as well get a few more hours restoration done on the car. No longer having a job meant she had plenty of time to work on her 1940s Dodge convertible, unfortunately it also meant that she had no spare money for parts, but hey, she was a glass half full kind of girl.

Amy smiled down into her orange juice.

Yeah right, who was she kidding?

Her glass was always half empty.

As if to go right ahead and prove that a pessimistic outlook best suited her life, this was the moment when she finally realised she wasn't alone. The glass slid from her fingers and smashed on the hard slate floor.

"You."

He was sitting at her kitchen table. The man she had been having nightmares about for the last fourteen days. The man no one knew about. Because how did you tell someone that the monster who killed Nick Fury had spared your life on a whim? And anyway, who did you tell, when almost everyone you thought you knew turned out to be the enemy? And now most of them were dead.

He looked exactly the same. Well, he seemed even bigger, framed in the familiar confines of her kitchen. Perhaps he was a bit grubbier too, more dishevelled, but otherwise, yes, exactly the same, even down to the sad, lost expression on his face that had first prompted her to ask if he was okay.

"What are you doing here?"

And why wasn't she wearing her gun? Well, she knew why, because it got in the way when she was working under the car, but if he was here to correct his mistake of not killing her then she kind of deserved to die for being such an idiot. She knew she was on one of HYDRA's hit lists now, but had been desperately hoping that her last encounter with them had been just that- her last.

He blinked slowly, and only then did he finally seem to see her, to hear her question. She had seen the hopeless expression that he was wearing before. She normally encountered it in the mirror staring back at her.

"Can you fix me?"

"Fix you?"

Of all the things that she had expected him to say that hadn't been one of them. Amy stepped over the mess of spilled orange and broken glass on the floor. She approached him slowly, carefully, just as though she was walking towards a dangerous animal that might turn on her at any moment.

When she reached the kitchen table she pressed her palms down on the polished wood and looked into his eyes. Such deceptively beautiful eyes.

"Look, I can't even fix myself, buddy."

"Bucky."

"Bucky?" she echoed him. Frowned. "What's that? Your name?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know your name?" Amy asked. She tilted her head to the side and decided it was time to take a seat. She leant her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her hands. Thinking fast. Trying to work out how best not to die. "Well, let's go with Bucky. Everyone needs a name. Mine's Amy."

"Amy Thomas. There are twenty-seven people with that name who live in Washington, D.C."

"And have you spent your time showing up in their kitchens as well since I saw you last?"

"No. You're the only one with an engineering degree and a record of military service."

She leant back in her chair, away from him. She laid one arm across her stomach and the other across her chest, creating an instinctive barrier between herself and the man opposite. She knotted one finger in the fine chain that she always wore around her neck, found the tiny silver cross hanging there and pressed it hard into the pad of her thumb.

"Okay. That's impressive. Creepy, but impressive. And you know those little details, how?"

"'Amy Thomas. S.H.I.E.L.D. engineer.' I remembered."

She had tried to forget most things about that day two weeks ago, but she did kind of recall the HYDRA soldier with the mean right hook yelling something along those lines before dragging her into the back of the black van. The same soldier that the man sitting opposite her had killed so effortlessly with that wicked metal arm of his.

She had been part of a rescue party that day, looking for survivors from the helicarrier crashes, or so she'd thought, before the guy she was working with pulled a weapon on her.

"Most S.H.I.E.L.D. agents are ex-military," he continued, as he stared at her. Appraised her. Found her wanting. "You don't look like a soldier."

"No, I wasn't very good at it. How did you find me?"

"I made you my mission."

Amy realised she was still fiddling anxiously with her necklace. She stopped. Started chewing her thumbnail instead.

"Okay. Even creepier. Go on."

Bucky. She was going to call him Bucky, at least in the privacy of her own head because it was a nice unintimidating name for the terrifying assassin sitting at her kitchen table.

Bucky tilted his head at her this time.

"I looked you up in the library."

"You- what?"

"There was an old newspaper article about a soldier with your name."

"And the librarian just handed it over to you?"

"I didn't go when the library was open."

"Of course you didn't." She blew out her breath. "I'm pretty sure I know the story you mean. It doesn't contain my address."

"But it did contain an interview with you, and the reporter's name, so I knew he must have known how to contact you at least."

Amy blanched.

"Is he-?"

"Alive."

She rubbed the heel of her hand against her forehead.

"How is it you managed to do all of that without being caught but it doesn't look like you've slept, bathed or eaten since I saw you last?"

"They trained me to find people."

"And to kill them," she whispered.

"I don't want to kill you. I want you to tell me who I am."

All Amy wanted to do was cry, except she didn't do that anymore. She could definitely feel a headache starting behind her eyes though.

"Okay," she said.

He looked at her expectantly. In fact, the sheer weight of expectation in his stare was a burden that she didn't know if she was strong enough to carry, but it looked like she was going to have to try. She had a decision to make, but really, she realised she had already made it the moment she sat down to listen to his story.

"Right. First thing's first. Why don't we get you cleaned up and dressed in something mildly less conspicuous?" She scrunched up her nose slightly as she looked him up and down. There was an awful lot of him to dress. "With any luck I'll be able to find something that'll fit."

He stared back at her without moving a muscle.

"I'll even fix you something to eat, and it'll almost certainly be edible."

His mouth didn't even so much as twitch at her half-hearted attempt at humour.

"And then I guess you can have a nap while I work out what on earth I'm supposed to do with you," she said weakly.

"Nap?"

"You know, sleep." She actually managed to muster a smile. "You do sleep, don't you?"

"No."

"Everyone needs to sleep, Bucky."

He shot her a look that was slightly startled, slightly threatening. Because it was the first time that she had called him Bucky or the first time that she had outright contradicted him? She had no idea. Maybe it was a little of both.

"They don't let me sleep. They just turn me off."

A deep frown was tugging at Amy's face. It hurt her various cuts and bruises, but she couldn't seem to stop it. She pushed herself back up onto her feet and walked around the kitchen table until she was standing beside him. Defenceless. But he was the one who shifted back in his seat this time, considering her warily. She almost thought he looked nervous.

Maybe that's what gave her the courage to make her next move. She undoubtedly surprised them both when she pressed a hand flat against the left side of his chest. Under all the steely hard muscle that lay beneath her fingertips, she found what she was looking for.

"Sure feels like there's a heart in there to me," she said. She reached for his hand while she still had the nerve and placed it under hers so that he could feel the steady thrum of his heartbeat too. "See? You're a man, not a machine."

Bucky was staring expressionlessly into her face.

"What makes you so sure?"

"No machine has ever asked me to fix it."


	3. Chapter 3

Bucky stood under the showerhead and let the warm water wash away the blood and dirt that coated his skin. It ran in soothing rivers down the planes of his body. He began, very slightly, to relax. Two weeks of evading HYDRA, or whatever was left of HYDRA and the rest of his enemies, had worn thin pretty fast. He wasn't used to being active for so long. He was even less used to making decisions for himself. One of the reasons why he had sought out his reluctant hostess.

He turned his head to look towards the bathroom door. Water ran into his eyes, he blinked it away. Amy Thomas. MEng. 29 years old. Corporal. Formerly of the 249th Engineer Battalion. Blown up by insurgents in Iraq. One of only two members of her patrol to survive. Facts he'd learned from the newspaper article that he'd used to track her down. Facts that now rattled around inside his empty head. He knew more about her life than he did about his own.

What he didn't know was if she was currently somewhere betraying him to any of the many people who wanted him dead. Or worse, wanted to use him as their weapon again. So he turned off the shower and reached for one of the towels that she had laid out for him earlier. He rubbed the thick material through his fingertips, unable to recall when he had ever felt anything so soft.

The arm spasmed. Something he'd been ignoring. He rolled his shoulder, to the tune of mechanisms shifting, and for the moment the twitching stopped.

He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror above the wash basin, but as that was something else he didn't want to confront at present he let his eyes drift to the left, happening upon a shelf full of toiletries, deodorant, tablets… enough to stock a small drugstore. He knotted the towel around his waist and read the labels on the boxes. Buprenorphine. Fentanyl. Fluoxetine.

"Bucky?"

A gentle knock at the door accompanied the quiet call of his name. His name? Really. It would take some getting used to, as would being treated with anything approaching common courtesy. He stepped away from the shelf, aware, somehow, that he was prying into something that didn't concern him, and opened the bathroom door.

"Oh!"

Amy gave a little start of surprise, which made no sense to Bucky given that she had just called for him to come. She pinned her gaze somewhere over his left shoulder, as her cheeks turned an interesting shade of red beneath their bruises. She thrust a bundle of clothes into his arms.

"Something there should fit."

He eyed the garments, and then something else caught his attention. He sniffed the air experimentally.

"What's that smell?"

Amy made an odd noise in the back of her throat, somewhere between a growl and a groan. She turned on her heel and darted back down the hall towards the kitchen.

He watched her disappear out of sight. She limped more noticeably when she ran. She limped all the time, but it was pretty well disguised when she walked. Bucky glanced back at the medication in her bathroom, as he swiped the towel over his face and across his chest.

He dried off quickly and then picked through the clothes. There were a pair of jeans that looked like they were about the right size. They sat pretty low on his hips, but Amy seemed to have known he was leaner around the waist than their previous owner because she'd found him a belt to wear too. He pulled on a plain black t-shirt to go with them. It was a little tight across the shoulders, but it was clean and soft, and- he wondered why Amy had a stash of men's clothes in her house?

And then he wondered where that thought had come from? He didn't care about Amy or the little mysteries of her life. He had mysteries enough of his own to solve.

Dressed. Feeling vaguely human. Bucky walked back through the house to the kitchen. He found Amy there, staring blankly at a pot of something that was simmering on the stove. She hadn't heard his approach. In fact she didn't seem to sense him at all until he took pity on her and cleared his throat.

She turned on a dime then, and stared at him, wide eyes doing a quick flick up and down the length of his body.

"Someone sure cleans up well," she murmured.

He wasn't sure if he was supposed to have heard that, but he did, his hearing was exceptional. Not that he knew how to respond. Amy left the stove momentarily, and grabbed a kitchen towel that she tossed in his direction.

"That t-shirt is going to be soaked if you don't dry your hair."

He looked from the towel in his hand to the woman who had thrown it at him. She raised an eyebrow.

"I suppose that's another one of those things you don't do?"

She motioned for him to take a seat, so he sat. He was starting to lose count of the number of times she had surprised him, but taking the towel out of his hands and throwing it over his head so she could dry his hair ranked fairly high in the list.

"Your mom never warn you that you'll catch your death of cold?"

It almost sounded like there was a smile in her voice, and although vigorous, her handling of his head didn't hurt, so much as rankle. He was just on the verge of grabbing her wrists when it hit him. He'd been here before. It was colder, and he was younger, and the hands on his head were less gentle. But this had happened to him before. No one in HYDRA had cared a damn about anything as utterly irrelevant, so before HYDRA then, someone had cared.

"There. Much better." Amy stood back and admired her handy work. Her expression faltered. "You okay?"

Bucky dragged a hand through his hair to flatten it.

"You ask that a lot."

"Do I?"

"Seems like it."

She let out a huff of breath that blew her bangs off her forehead, and then turned back to the stove.

"Probably because you never give me an answer." She glanced at him over her shoulder. "By the way, it seems like you're all healed since I saw you last? You haven't got as much as a scratch on you anymore. Um- Not that I was looking. Earlier. In the bathroom. I wasn't. I just- you seem well," she finished, her tone strangled. She went back to studying the pot on the stove intently.

"I heal faster than most people."

"Must come in handy," she said, absent-mindedly touching two fingers against the cut on her lip.

"Only if you plan on getting hurt a lot."

Amy didn't appear to have a reply for that, but she looked sort of sad as she reached above her head to grab two bowls from a cupboard on the wall. She started to dish up whatever it was that she'd cooked. Tried to cook? She ladled it into the bowls and carried them over to the table, placing one dish in front of him. She fetched some flatware from a drawer before taking a seat herself.

"My mom's chili. Always makes me feel better."

He stared at the dish in front of him. It did smell… good. Warm with a hint of spice. Amy weighed her fork between her fingers as she watched him scrutinise the meal.

"Oh come on, I haven't poisoned it." She ate a mouthful from her own bowl to prove it. "I didn't even burn it. Much. Besides, even if I had laced it with arsenic I'm sure you'd be just fine," she added dryly, spearing a piece of mince from his own dish and popping it into her mouth to underline her point.

Honestly. He hadn't thought the dish was poisoned. He just couldn't remember ever eating before. There had been drugs and pills and injections, and phials full of God knows what, but a plate of homemade food, never. He picked up his own fork slowly and followed Amy's lead, copying her actions as she chewed and swallowed.

Flavour unfurled on this tongue. How could he had forgotten the taste of beef and tomato? He helped himself to another heaped forkful. Beans. Spice. A bitter hint of something burnt. He recognised this food. Or did he remember it?

"You put onions in this?"

"You don't like onions?" Amy's brow furrowed.

"I don't know- I just- someone used to make it without them…" but who and when, and why he could remember the taste of a meal he might never have eaten but he couldn't be certain of his own name were questions he couldn't answer.

Bucky realised that Amy had stopped watching him as though she thought he might get up and kill her at any moment. Now she sat considering him with an unhappy expression in her eyes that verged on pity. It wasn't an improvement.

"Can I have a glass of water?"

Amy's eyebrows disappeared beneath her bangs. He almost said ma'am, he nearly said please, polite turns of phrase that he was sure he had known how to use once. Amy evidently didn't expect them from him.

"Sure," she said, pushing herself back from the table.

She brought him a second serving of chili when she returned with the drink. He ate that too. It helped to fill at least one empty hole inside him.

"So, now what?" she asked, as she tidied up the dishes. "I've cleaned and fed you. I don't suppose that will do, will it?"

"I need to know who I am."

Amy turned back to face him. She rested one hand on her hip. The fingers of her other hand tugged at the chain of the necklace she was wearing.

"Yeah… remind me, why do you think I can help with that?"

"You knew the man from before."

"Captain Rogers? But I don't _know_ know him. I mean, I know him about as well as I know Tony Stark."

Bucky looked confused. Stark? A tiny distant bell tinkled in his head. Why did that name feel familiar? But he was distracted from looking for the answer by the smile that crossed Amy's face.

"You know, like a celebrity idol," she elaborated.

Something in her tone irked him.

"You work for S.H.I.E.L.D."

"I worked for S.H.I.E.L.D. I don't do that anymore." She folded her arms. "What's your interest in Captain Rogers, anyhow?"

"He knew me."

"Really?" Amy perked up considerably. "So why aren't you sitting at his kitchen table?"

Good question. Did he want to give her the answer?

No.

Yes?

"Bucky?"

"I think I'm afraid."


	4. Chapter 4

Amy was losing her mind. It was the only explanation that made any sense. S.H.I.E.L.D. might be gone, but there were still people she could call, numbers she could ring. There was no reason why she had to deal with the man currently sitting on her sofa staring into space all on her own. Except for the fact that she felt an undeniable weight of responsibility towards him.

_Thank you, Daddy._ Being a Reverend's disappointment of a daughter left a girl with issues. That and Bucky reminded her of all the guys she'd lost in Iraq. Obviously. She saw their ghosts in the tension that radiated from his body. In the way he could never drop his guard. Was never fully at ease. It was as though he was anticipating an attack at every single moment. It was exhausting just to watch him.

But he had murdered Director Fury and countless other agents. Amy couldn't let herself lose sight of that fact in a fog of sympathy.

And yet, he had saved her life.

She rubbed her forehead. Her head was absolutely pounding.

Bucky had been doing the staring thing pretty much since dinner. Amy wondered what he was thinking, but realised she probably didn't want to know. She still had no idea what she was supposed to do with him- and wondered too at what point his patience with her would snap?

She leant her shoulder against the doorframe and sighed. It was growing dark outside.

"I've made up one of the spare bedrooms for you."

Bucky didn't show any sign that he had heard her speak. But that was okay. Amy was getting used to being ignored by him. She walked across the living room and looked outside at the neighbouring houses.

"Do you think anyone knows you're here?" she asked, without expecting an answer.

She liked her street. She liked her neighbours. There was the old couple who lived opposite with their five miniature poodles, and the family next door with two kids and another one on the way. Nice, normal, innocent people, who didn't deserve for her to be hiding a fugitive in her house. She chewed her lip until she tasted blood.

She didn't realise Bucky was standing behind her until she felt the heat of his body at her back. A frisson of fear skated down her spine, at least she told herself it was fear.

"You don't have to move around like a ninja, you know. This isn't Mission Impossible."

"What?"

"Nothing. Never mind." She turned around to face him. Better. Slightly. He was taller than her, broader than her, so very much stronger than her, but at least by keeping him in her line of sight she could fool herself into not feeling completely powerless. "Do you think HYDRA knows you're here?"

"No."

Amy sensed that what he actually meant was 'no, not yet', which had her biting her lip again.

He stood next to her and looked up and down the street, much the same as she had been doing, except she had the air of prey and he was clearly a predator. He gave off the aura of a tiger on the hunt. Amy felt more like a mouse.

He pulled the cord for the blinds with a snap of his wrist that made her jump. They fell shut with a rattle.

"You should stay away from the window," he said, as he left her side and went back to his seat on the sofa. He kept his eyes on her though, their focus now razor sharp. "Because it seems like they don't know you're here either."

Amy returned his gaze warily, not liking where this conversation might be heading.

She wouldn't mind being ignored again right about now.

"Why was HYDRA after you?" he asked.

Amy blinked at Bucky. Another shiver worked its way down her spine. This time icy and penetrating. It seemed to close around her heart and chill the blood in her veins. She rubbed the tops of her arms, and was more keenly aware than ever of the ache in her chest where her ribs were slowly knitting back together.

She sighed heavily, and then sank down onto the soft cushioned seat of an armchair. Defeated.

"Because I helped design the new helicarriers probably."

Bucky's face was a question. One that Amy didn't want to answer. She started to pick at a loose thread on the arm of her chair rather than have to meet his eyes.

"I didn't know about Project Insight, okay? Well, I mean, I knew a little, but only so much as any other S.H.I.E.L.D. agent knew. You said it yourself, I'm an engineer. I like building stuff." She shrugged her shoulders defensively, sat back and folded her arms across her chest. "I wasn't that important to the project."

"Until?"

Amy hesitated. He was pretty good at this, or she was simply desperate to start offloading some of the weight on her conscience. She had been sworn to secrecy, but all of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s secrets were public knowledge now anyway, so what did it matter anymore?

She toyed with the hair of her ponytail and started talking.

"A little over two weeks ago, before- well, everything- Maria Hill, one of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s most senior agents, contacted me out of the blue. She asked me if there was a way to disable the carriers."

"You told her there was?"

"Well, I said there was in theory. I mean, I didn't write the finished code that I assume was used to take them down. I'm no genius." She looked down at her hands, turning them over in her lap miserably. "I'm just- handy with a spanner."

"So you weren't on one of those ships?"

"Do you honestly think I'd have been alive to be captured by that HYDRA guy if I had been?" She smiled ruefully. "I did apply to work on one actually, six months or so ago. I wanted to be their head engineer, but I failed the physical. Thank God."

"Because of your leg?"

Amy's rueful smile became a little crooked.

"I like to think it's because I'm not psycho HYDRA material, but yes, I dare say it was actually because of my leg." She looked down at the offending limb. Bucky followed her gaze and Amy felt the damaged skin start to tingle beneath the denim of her jeans. "You noticed, huh? I thought I'd gotten pretty good at hiding it."

"What happened?"

"You read my story, right? The Humvee I was travelling in got blown up. I came home from Iraq with a ton of scaffolding in my leg. But I was lucky, at least I got to come home."

"You sound like you wish you hadn't."

"You're awfully astute all of a sudden."

"I was in a war," he said, as though it was an explanation, perhaps it was.

"Which one?" she asked.

"It feels like all of them."

Amy stared into Bucky's face. He needed a shave. And possibly a haircut. Safer to think about that than the tortured look in his eyes. She would have to go out and buy him some things tomorrow. If he was still here tomorrow. She couldn't keep scavenging through what remained of Dan's old stuff. Although, it wasn't as though having Bucky look even more attractive than he currently looked was going to help the situation. Her situation. She shook her head in an effort to sort her muddled thoughts.

Assassin. Murderer. Remember it, she ordered herself. Except now she had started thinking 'soldier' instead. And that changed the dynamics of the playing field.

"We all have our demons, Bucky." She found herself speaking again, although she was sure she should shut up and stop baring her soul. "I came home hating war. Hating the politics of war and the human cost behind them. I was convinced there had to be a better way. I wanted to save people from living my hell, but all I managed to do was help make things even worse."

She didn't like the way he was watching her, as though every one of her sins was on view to be judged, as though her naivety was a thing to be pitied and scorned.

"You feel guilty," he said, slowly.

"I am guilty."

"What does that make me?"

"An enigma, which I plan on solving tomorrow."

Hopefully. Bucky was damaged beyond belief, but beyond repair? She hoped not. There was hope for everyone, according to her dad. It was one of the few things that they could agree on.

"Okay. Sleep. I certainly need it, even if you don't," she said. She got up from the chair and walked back across the room in search of her bed.

"Amy." It was the first time Bucky had properly called her by her name. She didn't like how intimate it sounded on his lips. He waited until she was looking back at him before he continued. "You have a gun, right? Make sure you sleep with it tonight."

It wasn't a threat, not even a warning, he sounded sad and tired, and that lost look was back in his eyes.

Amy dragged a weary hand across her face.

"Goodnight, Bucky."


	5. Chapter 5

The carriage clock on the mantelpiece read three thirty six. Sleep was something that Bucky had added to the list of things that he didn't know how to do anymore. He had tried lying down on the too-soft bed that Amy had fixed in one of her spare rooms. It hadn't worked. And he had quickly grown bored of staring at the ceiling, so he had returned to the living room. Now he was sitting on the sofa, watching the clock, but that was starting to weary him too. He wondered how long Amy needed to sleep.

He stood up and wandered the room. The light was off, but he could see in the dark extraordinarily well. He already knew the layout of the whole building, but now he took in the finer details of his surroundings. He thought Amy's house was oddly clutter free. He had been in homes before. Usually those of his victims. A flash of red stabbed through his mind and he hissed with pain. Those houses had all been packed full of far more possessions than this one.

There were very few trinkets, no pictures, barely anything to indicate that the house was a home at all. Aside from the TV, there was a desk in one corner of the room, and a lonely bookcase in another, complete with a half-dead pot plant on top of it.

Bucky walked over and cast an eye over the spines of the books. He found countless car manuals and engineering textbooks, Tony Stark's unauthorised biography, a cookery book that looked like it had never been opened, and right at the bottom, a leather bound album marked 'wedding photos'. He was debating whether or not to reach for it when a thud in another corner of the house had him on high alert.

He listened and waited. He was out of ammunition for his gun, but Amy had, undoubtedly foolishly, left his knife alone when she'd disposed of his clothes earlier. He had retrieved it when she went to bed. He drew it now. Tossed and caught it. The weight and shape of the weapon in his hand was just as familiar to him as any part of his body. A door opened somewhere. Bucky moved silently to the entrance of the living room, and then sank back into the shadows, poised and ready to strike.

The uneven tread of bare feet padded down the carpeted hallway.

He breathed out, and flicked on a light switch.

Amy recoiled from the sudden brightness.

"Really?" she asked, squinting and trying to shield her eyes.

She was wearing a pair of blue cotton shorts and a matching vest top that had twisted itself up to her navel. She was the shape of an hourglass. All softness and curves. He couldn't explain why it made him angry, but his grip on the handle of the knife was hard enough to hurt.

"I could have killed you."

"No, just blinded me. Turn off the light," she said, swatting ineffectively for the switch.

He slammed a fist into the wall. The metal one. Something structural cracked. But the light went out. Not that it made much difference to him. He could still see every inch of Amy standing in front of him.

"I thought someone had broken into the house."

"Oh. Sorry. Just me falling out of bed. Apparently I 'thrash around' in my sleep. I normally just sleep on the floor, but it seemed kind of weird to do that with a guest in the house."

It took Bucky a full ten seconds to realise she meant him.

"What are you doing out here?" he asked, only slowly starting to level out after being so close to launching an attack.

In fact, he was still brandishing the knife at her, so he pocketed it hastily. She seemed remarkably unfazed. He gathered that was because she was still more than half asleep. And probably unable to see.

"I'm getting a glass of water."

She was also holding a box of tablets and walking much worse than earlier. His gaze dropped down to her legs. He swallowed. There was a whole lot of her legs on display. The left one was a thing of perfection. Smooth and toned and silky. The right, not so much. It was criss-crossed from ankle to thigh with deep jagged scars, and in many places the skin was waxy-smooth, the muscle beneath ripped and misshapen.

While he was busy trying to decode this new side of Amy, she bumped into him. Twice. Growled.

"You're blocking the whole of the hallway."

And boy was she grumpy and disorientated when roused in the middle of the night.

It was fraying Bucky's already shaken nerves.

"Go and sit down. I'll get you your drink," he snapped.

"Oh. Okay." Amy sounded instantly happier. She rubbed her eyes with her free hand, yawned widely, and then proceeded to sink down onto the carpet.

"Woah!" He caught her around the waist and kept her on her feet. "On a chair, Sleeping Beauty."

She allowed herself to be guided by his hands in a way that he could not remember ever experiencing before. At least not in this lifetime. She was all softness and warmth under his fingertips. Her hip bumped his as she stumbled over her feet. He practically carried her the last few steps.

And then he dropped her unceremoniously onto the sofa.

It didn't seem to bother Amy.

"You know who Sleeping Beauty is?" she asked around another yawn.

"No."

"But you just-"

Bucky left Amy talking to herself as he went in search of her glass of water. He couldn't put his finger on why he was so agitated. But he banged through three cupboards before finding a glass, and then he nearly wrenched the faucet out of the sink as he filled the tumbler. He marched back into the living room and thrust the glass at the woman sitting on the sofa. He splashed most of its contents into her lap. She had enough sense not to complain.

"Thank you."

She popped two pills out of the packet and swallowed them one at a time.

"What are they for?"

"Pain."

The blunt confession made him uncomfortable.

Amy finished the rest of the glass of water and set it down on the floor.

"Sorry," she said.

"What for?"

"Not sure." She yawned yet again. "But I can be pretty dopey when I first wake up. My old drill sergeant used to find it hysterical. And when I say hysterical, I mean I almost died twice." She patted the cushion beside her in invitation. "Can't sleep?"

He shook his head and sat down cautiously. Careful not to touch her again.

"I was thinking about what you said earlier. About how they'd turn you off. Can't you turn yourself off? That's all sleep is I guess."

"How?"

"Close your eyes?" He kept his open, but hers slid shut. "And relax, definitely." She poked his right shoulder. The coiled muscle tensed a little harder. "See, not relaxed." Amy tucked her left leg under her and let her right hang straight. "Try thinking happy thoughts?"

"I don't have any."

Amy's eyes fluttered open. "That's sad." She tried to search his face in the pale moonlight. "There must be something."

"I-" His head was like a room of locked drawers. Surely in one of them somewhere was something good? If only he had the key. For a second that man's face flashed across his mind, but trying to pin down why was like grasping smoke. "I don't- I don't remember-"

Amy's hand found its way to his and gave a light squeeze. He stared down at her fingers.

She had the hands of a mechanic. They were a little rough, a little scarred, complete with short sensible nails and not a trace of jewellery, but they were so small and put together so delicately in comparison to his own, especially his left, that he found it hard to understand why she was so trusting.

He literally could have killed her, and she wouldn't have been able to lift a finger against him. The thought did not sit well with Bucky. It made him feel far too responsible for her safety. He had been deadly serious when he'd told her to arm herself earlier.

Amy seemed untroubled however. Her thoughts focused in a different direction entirely.

"HYDRA sure did a number on you, didn't they? What do you remember?"

Bucky tried to concentrate.

"The man from last week. You said his name was Steve Rogers. I knew him. He said-" …_I'm with you 'til the end of the line_… "-he said he was my friend."

"Seriously?" Amy's eyes were open and suddenly very wide awake. "You didn't tell me that before. What else did he have to say?"

"That my name's James Buchanan Barnes."

"Are you kidding me? You're only telling me this now? That's a hell of a lot more to go on than Bucky!"

"It is? I'm not sure it's true…"

Amy shook her head and made a sound of frustration. He watched as she uncurled herself and got up. She turned on a lamp that filled the room with a warm yellow light and fetched a laptop from the desk in the corner. She was hurriedly tapping away as she slowly limped back towards him when she froze.

Bucky's whole body strained in response. Adrenaline surged again. He hadn't sensed that anything was wrong. Amy's eyes lifted from the screen, dropped down, she caught her lip between her teeth.

"One second. I'll be right back."

Three hundred seconds later, she reappeared, dressed in loose grey jogging pants and an oversized t-shirt. It was certainly less distracting than what she had been wearing, but there was no way he was forgetting what he'd already seen. Not without being wiped. Maybe not even then.

"Why-"

"I have issues." She grabbed the laptop again and sat down beside him. She shot a forced smile in his confused direction. "Congratulations, you're not the only one. Okay, let's see if we can find out who you are, James Barnes." She wrinkled her nose and looked at him sideways. "Are we sticking with Bucky or changing to James?"

"I don't care."

"You have to care. It's your name. It's important."

He stared at her blankly. "You choose."

"I'm not choosing. It's your name!"

He kept right on staring.

"Okay." Amy sighed. She twisted so that she was facing him fully and summoned an overly sunny smile. "Hi Bucky. Hi James. Hi Bucky. Hi James. Which one feels right?"

She looked at him expectantly, smile slowly fading when he said nothing. In the end she gave up and started tapping things into the laptop again, but he replayed her voice over and over in his head until he had an answer.

"Bucky."

He saw Amy's fingers pause mid key stroke. She glanced sideways, something in her face, or maybe just her eyes, softened. A smile, small but genuine this time, flirted with the corners of her mouth. She gave her head a little satisfied nod.

"Bucky it is," she said.


	6. Chapter 6

Amy didn't understand. The search term 'James Barnes' brought up over one hundred million hits. She'd found an author, a composer, a couple of politicians and an English cricketer, but no one like the man sitting beside her. Asleep. She shot a glance in his direction. She wanted to be asleep. Needed to be asleep. Dawn was breaking outside and she hadn't managed to uncover anything of substance. It was almost like Bucky's existence had been systematically wiped off the internet and every single online database that she had access to… which was a seriously disturbing thought.

They needed Captain Rogers. How she was going to pull that off, Amy had no idea. She closed her laptop and rubbed her eyes. Shower and coffee. Maybe her brain would start to work again after she gave it a jump start. She stood up stiffly, stretched her arms above her head, and looked down at Bucky. Tired though she was, it was hard not to be relieved that he had finally managed to catch a little rest. She grabbed a throw from one of the armchairs, hesitated for a second and then gently tossed it over him. He didn't stir, but he did look awfully handsome.

"You can't keep him."

And really, why would she want to try? She wasn't very good at keeping regular guys, and this one practically had 'trouble' tattooed across his chest. A very fine chest that she had absolutely not been checking out the day before. If she could still remember the exact pattern of water droplets that had been scattered across his pectoral muscles, well, that was mere coincidence.

Shaking her head at her own ridiculousness, Amy walked back to her bedroom, where she grabbed a pair of jeans, a clean t-shirt and fresh underwear, and then made for the bathroom. She hopped into the shower, kept the water a little cooler than she might have ordinarily liked, and scrubbed herself clean.

Amy wasn't one to linger, a hang up from her army training, and a general aversion to her own body these days, so she was in and out of the bathroom in under five minutes. She pulled her damp hair back into its usual ponytail and headed for the kitchen. A glance into the living room on her way passed informed her that Bucky was awake.

She juddered to a standstill when she saw what he was holding.

He looked up from the wedding album, and caught her standing in the doorway.

"You're married."

Amy wetted her lips. "Divorced, actually."

He stared at her, waiting for more. It was getting to be a habit. He sucked up information like a sponge. She wished it wasn't all about her mess of a life.

"I came home from Iraq broken. It wasn't Dan's fault. I just wasn't the woman he'd married anymore."

There. Nice and concise. Her life summed up in three short sentences.

"He left you?"

"I said we'd be better off apart. He didn't disagree."

"Did you mean it?"

"I guess. He's remarried now. They're expecting their first baby. See, so I was right, he is better off without me."

Amy kept walking to the kitchen. She didn't hear Bucky follow, but by the way the skin on the back of her neck prickled she guessed he was coming too. Pancakes. She needed pancakes. And coffee. Lots of coffee. She watched him take a seat at the table out of the corner of her eye as she gathered ingredients together.

"I don't think you're broken."

The eggs in her hand almost slipped through her fingers like the glass of orange juice that she'd smashed the day before. She blinked hard and cleared the lump out of her throat.

"Don't take this the wrong way, but you might not be the best person to judge."

He let her cook breakfast in uncomfortable silence after that. Amy cursed her tongue. And her inability to accept a compliment. She felt even worse when she had to admit to herself that it was kind of Bucky not to comment on the fact that she ruined her first batch of batter and had to start over from scratch. At least in the end she managed to offer him a cup of coffee and a plate piled high with pancakes as a peace offering.

"So, you slept," she said, venturing back to safer territory, as she fetched butter and maple syrup.

He waited until she was seated before picking up his fork. He stared at his plate as though he had never seen pancakes before, and then demolished half of his breakfast before responding.

"I dreamed I was falling."

Amy swallowed her own mouthful of food without chewing.

"Everyone has that dream now and again," she said, trying to make light of it.

"Off a train. He was there. Rogers."

Amy gave up on eating. She put down her fork and picked up her coffee. She was going to need to drink it black this morning.

"Okay. But you still slept. So at least that's good, right?" she persisted, her voice getting smaller.

Bucky shrugged his shoulders. Amy hated herself for noticing the flex of muscle and metal. He was certainly dangerous, but maybe not in the ways she had first imagined.

"I don't know how I managed to sleep."

"A combination of exhaustion and my scintillating presence, no doubt," she said, cracking a self-effacing smile over the rim of her mug. "I have that effect on men."

"Did Dan tell you that?"

Amy drank half her cup of coffee to save herself from answering.

"So," she said slowly, dragging the little word out for as long as possible, "you haven't asked me what I managed to find out about you yet."

He shot her one of his looks. One of the less friendly, more intimidating kind.

Amy squirmed guiltily.

"Okay, look, so I haven't exactly worked out who you are yet, Bucky. I mean, it's like you don't even exist. You keep telling me you know Captain Rogers, but-" She put down her mug and pinched the bridge of her nose. "All right, how old are you?"

He gave her one of his blankest stares.

She returned it, except she was studying him closely.

"I don't think you look any older than your late twenties, thirty tops, but-"

He kept staring at her, this time expectantly.

She couldn't bring herself to put her thoughts into words. It was too impossible. It was just- Captain Rogers was a man out of time. A living legend. So how could he possibly know Bucky- how could be possibly be friends with Bucky- unless- unless-

"What did HYDRA do to you?" she asked, stomach churning.

"I don't remember."

Amy really hated those three words.

"You have to remember," she said, reaching across the table to grab his hand. "Please. You're never going to find the answers you're looking for if you don't." She saw his arm flinch. The metal one. God. She was stupid. "And when are you going to tell me about that?" she asked. The question caught on a sigh. She saw his eyes narrow. "Is that the real reason you found yourself an engineer?"

He searched her face. More focused, more alert. She didn't know what he was looking for, or if he found it. She did know that she didn't much care for the intense scrutiny, but she didn't turn away.

"I'm not sure," he said at length.

"Well, do you want me to take a look? I know I'm not from HYDRA, but I reckon that can only be a good thing."

Amy waited. Wondered if Bucky would deny there was a problem, but eventually he nodded his head.

"I'll grab my toolbox," she said, standing up. "Do you need to lie down, or is it okay if you just sit, or- well, you tell me, what normally happens when someone looks at your arm?"

"They strap me to a chair."

"Really?" Amy asked, although it wasn't exactly a question. Her mouth formed a thin hard line. "I'm not strapping you to a chair, Bucky."

He seemed conflicted.

"I can't always control it."

"That's okay."

He shot her a look, as if to say she didn't understand.

She didn't understand. So he was forced to find the words.

"I don't want to hurt you."

"You won't."

"How do you know?" he asked.

He was wearing his lost expression again.

"Because you've just told me that you don't want to," Amy replied. She even managed half a breath of laughter. "Wait here. I won't be long."

She had 'borrowed' a few things from S.H.I.E.L.D. over the years, and salvaged a few more when she realised it had all gone to hell. She walked back into the kitchen a few minutes later with a toolbox containing an assortment of instruments that she doubted even half a dozen mechanics in the whole country could name, let alone use.

Bucky had tidied the dishes off the table in her absence. She found that surprising. And a little bit adorable. He had also removed his shirt. She found that distracting beyond all belief.

"Okay," she said, pulling up a chair so she could perch right beside him. "Is this all right?" she asked, waiting for his permission to start, which seemed to confuse him. She took hold of a dainty silver tool that glowed blue at the end. "You'll tell me if it hurts, right? And I'll stop." He kept looking at her as though he didn't understand a word that she was saying. "Hello, Bucky?"

"Yes?"

Amy sat back in her seat, not wanting to coerce him. She had noticed his habit of obeying without question- had realised that he was used to being controlled.

She was both curious and fascinated by his arm, and keen, maybe a little too keen to have a closer look at it, but if he didn't trust her- well, she tried to look at it from his point of view. She really wouldn't want just anyone poking around inside one of her limbs. If he let her do this he would be making himself extremely vulnerable.

"You can say no," she said. "Wait until you find someone more qualified."

"And where do you think I'm going to find that person?"

"Um-?" She caught her bottom lip between her teeth. "Pass."

"You're it, Amy. You're all the help I've got."


	7. Chapter 7

There were seventeen freckles dusted across the bridge of Amy's nose. A nose she wrinkled whenever she encountered something that troubled her about the circuitry of his arm. She kept up a nonstop dialogue of what she was doing, but Bucky found he was more interested in watching her face than listening to a mechanics lecture.

Her eyes were never still, their expression rarely the same for longer than a few seconds, and she was forever worrying her bottom lip with her teeth. The cut he'd seen placed there was never going to heal.

His technicians had never bothered to talk to him, had never asked if he was okay, or touched him with anything remotely like care. That much at least, Bucky was slowly starting to recall. He liked Amy's way better, particularly when the first thing she fixed was a short that eased the constant pinching pressure on one of his spinal nerves. He gave a long sigh of relief and relaxed into the kitchen chair.

Amy smiled.

"Better?" she asked.

"Thank you."

The words tasted foreign on his lips. Unfamiliar, but not unpleasant. He didn't have long to savour them however, or to impart how sincerely they were meant.

Amy had found another glitch, only when she tried to repair this one, his arm convulsed and nearly knocked her across the room. She would have been thrown over the back of her chair had she not grabbed his shoulder and ridden out the motion. She teetered on the back two legs of the chair for a moment, before shifting her weight forwards so her feet could touch the floor again.

She gave a low whistle.

"Guess I know what that breaker's there for now," she said, settling herself back on the edge of her seat, completely calm, completely nonchalant, as she went about selecting a different tool for the job.

Bucky could not risk being so blasé, and was staring at her, horrified, as he slowly drew his arm out of her reach.

Amy finally lifted her eyes to his face.

"Sorry. Did I hurt you?"

He couldn't even speak, but she must have been able to read a little of what he was thinking in his face.

"That was my fault. I disabled the rotary control." She looked apologetic. "I'll be more careful next time."

"Next time?"

"Figure of speech," she said. He didn't understand why there was a smile playing on her lips. "Besides, you were fast enough with your other hand to stop yourself taking a proper swing at me."

Had he been? The last few minutes were a blur. He kept seeing the HYDRA guard hit Amy with his baton. Kept remembering how much damage that had inflicted. Kept thinking about all the far worse ways he could injure her if he lost control.

Amy cleared her throat softly.

"You're going to have to let me finish if you want full use of that arm again."

He knew she was right, which was why he reluctantly allowed her to continue. But now he was on edge, alert to every whir and grind of the mechanisms that made up the limb. He was also aware of his pulse picking up speed. He couldn't remember being conscious of his own heartbeat until he'd met Amy and she'd made him confront his own humanity.

"Bucky, please relax. This is like doing open heart surgery on someone while they're running the hundred metres. You're overloading the circuits."

How was he supposed to relax when there was nothing to protect her from him _but_ him?

She was so close he could see each individual eyelash that framed her eyes.

"Please." She lifted those same eyes to his face and begged for his cooperation. "This is all tied into your nervous system. I've got stray currents flowing everywhere now and if you don't chill out something else is going to short. I don't exactly have a stash of vibranium in the garage to make spare parts if we break something."

It would be a lot easier to relax if he knew he couldn't hurt her. Maybe he didn't prefer having her fix him after all.

"I told you to restrain me."

Amy's expression verged for a moment on angry. And then she clicked her tongue, as though he was the one overreacting, rather than her completely underwhelming concern with her own safety.

"You also said you needed my help. Have you changed your mind?"

"No."

The one word confession was ripped from his lips with the greatest reluctance.

"Good. So just remember to breathe and I'll be done as quickly as possible."

Breathing. That's what Bucky tried to focus on. The kitchen smelled of pancakes and coffee, and the vase of flowers that sat in the windowsill. And Amy. Amy's scent was soap, shampoo and citrus. Fresh and crisp and tart.

Her eyes were narrowed in concentration, her lips pinched, in fact, she was the one who was barely breathing as she repaired the damage that she found. If she leaned in any closer she would be in his lap. The thought set a curious curling heat burning in his gut.

"Have you nearly finished?" he asked, much too aggressively.

She looked at him. Hurt. Ironically. He saw it for a second before her expression shuttered.

"Almost," she said, carefully working up the levels of circuitry as she began to seal his arm back together. "I-"

Amy paused, swore softly beneath her breath, and reached for a miniscule pair of tweezers. Bucky stopped breathing as she pulled his hand even closer to her face. She held him still with one of her own hands, unnecessarily, as he had also frozen, and then she oh-so-carefully pulled a microchip out of his wrist. It was smaller than a grain of rice. She held it up to the light.

"Someone really didn't want to lose you, did they?" she murmured, face tight with an emotion he recognised as fear.

"What is it?"

"GPS unit." She turned it over and around, examining it from every angle. "They can use it to find you, but I think our luck might be holding because it seems to be damaged."

"You're sure? How can you tell?"

"I've seen one before. Not this small, but the same kind of thing." Amy let go of his hand and picked up another one of her tools. This one burned blue at the end. She melted the microchip into nothingness. "Haven't you noticed? I know what all of this does." She waved the tool at the intricate workings of his arm, her face crestfallen. "I've been using the same technology for years on Project Insight. Different applications, but the same technology. HYDRA's technology."

She started to twist the chain of her necklace. Bucky flexed and relaxed his fingers.

"But you can use it to make something better than a weapon," he said, staring at his hand.

"You're not a weapon. And I can't- I'm not fit to do anything of the sort."

"You're smart."

"Hardly." Amy laughed unhappily. "And you'll soon think differently when you have a wider scope for comparison," she said, as she visibly pulled herself back together and went back to work.

Bucky doubted that was true, but what did he know? His head was a mess. He kept still, kept breathing and waited for Amy to finish closing the last few panels on his arm.

"There. Perfect." She patted his shoulder and injected a lightness into her voice that he didn't believe. "I reckon you're good to go. You want to test it out?"

The doorbell rang before he could reply. Bucky was on his feet by the time the last chime sounded.

"We're not overreacting," Amy said, grabbing his wrist, as though she could stop him. "It's probably just girl scouts selling cookies."

"So why are you shaking?"

"I'm not shaking," she lied. She smoothed her hands down her hips in an effort to steady them. "You stay here. I'll go and see who it is."

She started to walk out of the kitchen towards the front door, but turned in the doorway.

Given that Bucky hadn't 'stayed', that he was barely half a step behind her, he practically walked over her. Her sharp intake of breath and the way her hands fluttered for a moment against his bare chest touch something buried deep in his psyche.

She took a step backwards and composed herself.

"You're going to come help me if it's HYDRA, right?"

"What do you think I'm doing?"

"I think you're freaking me out." The doorbell rang again. "Look, just- stay hidden unless I shout, okay?"

The mailbox rattled.

And then a young voice called into the house.

"Mrs Thomas? It's Josh from next door. We hit our ball into your yard. My mom says you're probably still sick, but can I come get it anyway?"

Bucky felt the tension drain out of Amy's body.

"Sure thing, Josh, just give me a second."

She shot a pointed look in Bucky's direction and he faded into the shadows. Probably a good thing. The second Amy opened the front door a young boy zipped into the house. Blond hair, slight build, chattering away like crazy. Something itched at the back of Bucky's brain. He tried to reach it while Amy took the boy through the kitchen to the back door and out into the yard.

Their voices carried through the house as soon as they returned inside.

"Oh wow, my mom goes crazy if my dad brings his tools inside. What are you working on?"

Bucky's eyes turned towards the kitchen as he listened for Amy's answer.

"Um- carburettor for the Dodge."

"Oh neat! Is it nearly finished?"

He heard Amy laugh.

"Not quite."

Their voices were travelling back towards the front door.

"Can I drive it when it is?"

"Maybe. When you're old enough."

"Seriously? Thanks, Mrs Thomas! Thanks for the ball too. Oh hey, I brought your mail up for you." The boy handed over a bundle of letters that Amy thanked him for as she ushered him out the door. "I hope you feel better soon. I think you're starting to look pretty again by the way."

"Goodbye, Joshua," Amy said, closing the door with her foot as she looked through the mail that was now in her hand.

Bucky stepped out of his hiding place.

"Why did he think you were sick?"

Amy's eyes flicked up from a flyer she was reading. They dropped for a second to his chest and then snapped back up to his face. There was that slow aching burn in the pit of his stomach again.

"You might have missed it, but there was a little incident in Washington a couple of weeks ago. I somehow ended up in hospital with a few broken ribs and my face smashed in. Josh's mom baked me a pie."

"Sorry."

"Why? I'd have ended up in the morgue if it wasn't for you." She hesitated and then handed him the piece of paper that she'd been studying. "Do you think you should go?"

Bucky looked down at the flyer. It was from the Smithsonian. For their Captain America exhibition.


	8. Chapter 8

Bucky was going to come back.

Probably.

Amy drummed her fingers against the kitchen table. She had offered to go with him to the Smithsonian, but he'd said it would be too dangerous. She didn't see why it would be any more dangerous than anything that had happened to them so far, but she hadn't argued. If it was dangerous, she didn't want to be the one slowing him down. And if it was just an excuse so that he could leave now that he'd availed himself of her help, she'd rather not know just yet.

Besides. It was fine. Even if he didn't come back.

It wasn't possible to get attached to someone in twenty-four hours.

Well, three hundred and thirty-six hours. If you included the full two weeks since he'd saved her life. Which she didn't. She wasn't. Really. Because that would just be weird. She was just-

The doorbell rang.

Amy's heart gave a funny little leap. She squashed it down immediately. Bucky would almost certainly not ring the doorbell.

Would HYDRA?

No. Despite the heart attack she'd nearly given herself earlier, it wasn't their style either.

Josh.

Amy sighed, made her way to the front door, and pulled it open.

"You might need a new game if-" The words died on her lips. She looked up, and up again, mouth hanging open slightly. "Captain Rogers."

Amy had never actually met Steve Rogers. Not properly. He had walked passed her. Once. In a corridor of the Triskelion building. But she had never merited an introduction. Apparently that had changed.

She should have been pleased. Relieved, in fact. She wasn't- and she wasn't sure why that was.

"Ma'am." The super soldier gave his head a respectful nod. "This is Sam Wilson," he said, indicating to the man standing at his shoulder.

"Hi."

"Do you mind if we come in, Agent Thomas?"

"Um- sure- I guess."

Amy took a step backwards. Not knowing what else to do. She supposed there wasn't anything else she could do. The two men followed her into the house. Sam closed the front door behind him.

Amy was a little trapped, and a lot intimidated.

And she had rarely felt so conflicted. Here was Steve Rogers. The man who knew Bucky. The man she genuinely believed held the answers that he was searching for right now. But she knew that Bucky would not be happy about this- wasn't ready for this. They were partners. In the loosest sense of the word. Comrades. You didn't betray your comrades. Or did you? If it was for their own good.

Amy wished she was functioning on more than three hours of sleep. Because maybe then she would know the answer.

"I'm not an agent anymore," she said, for something to fill the heavy silence.

"But you were an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.?" Captain Rogers asked.

"As opposed to working for HYDRA? Yes. But I suppose you only have my word for that, Captain."

"We checked out your credentials. I think we're going to believe you," said Sam, with a sudden disarming grin.

Amy managed to summon a nervous smile in return.

"In that case, how can I help you, gentlemen?"

"We're looking for someone."

Captain Rogers glanced over her head into the kitchen. Amy didn't turn around. She already knew that she hadn't packed away her toolkit. She tried to school her features into a mask of blank curiosity.

"Are you looking here?" she asked.

"Seems like you were looking too at four o'clock this morning," said Sam.

"Pardon?"

"Your laptop. Issued by S.H.I.E.L.D., right? A subroutine was activated a week ago so we'd know if anyone went looking around for certain classified information."

Amy jammed her hands into the pockets of her jeans and gave a little defeated laugh.

Game over.

"I always knew I wasn't cut out to be a spy." She nodded to the living room and went to take a seat. The two men followed her closely, setting her tense nerves jangling. "Who is he then? Really?" she asked.

"You don't know?" Captain Rogers frowned.

"He doesn't know, so there's little chance me knowing."

"They call him the Winter Soldier, but I knew him as Bucky Barnes." Captain Rogers looked around the room, his deadly serious expression changing to one of disappointment. "He's not here anymore, is he?"

Amy sank back into her chair and shook her head.

"He remembers you, you know," she said.

She spoke softly. Something in Captain Rogers's disheartened face tugged at her heartstrings. She had always thought there was something earnest and hopeful about him. And sad. So sad. The underlying current of sorrow reminded her of Bucky. It made her want to trust him.

"Where is he now?"

"The Smithsonian."

"What?"

"I told you. He remembers you. He's trying to remember who he is too."

"You want to go after him, Steve?" Sam asked.

Amy couldn't believe it when Captain Rogers appeared to look to her for guidance. She didn't dare say anything, but he seemed to determine something anyway.

"Not yet."

"Did he hurt you?"

Amy looked towards Sam. He had asked her the question. He nodded at her face, indicating to the bruises that still hadn't quite healed. She was quick to shake her head.

"He saved my life."

Captain Rogers smiled for the first time since he'd arrived.

"Then we have something in common."

"He tried to kill me," Sam deadpanned.

Amy flinched. Although, clearly Bucky hadn't succeeded in killing him. She had to stop that train of thought abruptly when she realised she was trying to make excuses for him. She didn't think she was the only one though. Captain Rogers glanced at Sam and looked torn, before returning his attention to her.

"Bucky attacked me too. It might not be entirely safe for you to be around him, ma'am."

"Amy. I'll take my chances. I don't know if he's even coming back."

Captain Rogers very nearly smiled for a second time.

"If I know Bucky, he'll come back for you."

Amy's eyes widened and a blush crept into her cheeks.

"He's- It's not like that-" She coughed and cleared her throat. "He just needed my help for a little while, that's all. Look, can I get you a drink, Captain? Sam?"

"It's Steve, and yes, thank you. I'd love a drink."

..ooOOoo..

Captain America was sitting at her breakfast bar drinking a soda while he tried to draw out every ounce of information that she could give him about his friend. Her life had taken the strangest turns of late. Amy did her best to fill him in on what she knew, although she felt her answers were woefully inadequate.

She still wasn't sure if it was her place to give him these answers either, but his growing air of excitement was contagious. The very fact she had been around Bucky and was alive to tell her tale seemed to fill him with unalloyed optimism. She sipped her coffee and wondered where Bucky was now. And what would happen if he did decide to walk back through the front door.

"And you knew how to fix his arm?"

"It wasn't hard," Amy said, her face downcast. "HYDRA's technology. It seems it had infiltrated all of S.H.I.E.L.D."

"Hey, if you're good with stuff like that, you think you can fix my wings?"

"Wings?" Amy turned to look at Sam. He was leaning against the countertop.

"Yeah, your boyfriend tore them in half."

Amy wished they'd stop with the insinuations. Harmless though they undoubtedly believed them to be. Whatever spark of attraction she might feel for Bucky, and as humiliatingly apparent as it appeared to be, it would never come to anything. Quite apart from all the blindingly obvious reasons, she didn't do relationships. Not since Iraq.

Everywhere she looked, every magazine, every movie, every billboard, told her the truth. And even if they hadn't, she had an ex-husband who had summed it up succinctly. She was broken. Undesirable. Worthless. So she turned back to Steve hoping for some semblance of sense.

He seemed to sense her unease, and shot her an apologetic smile.

"Does Project Falcon mean anything to you?"

"Just the rumours from when I was with the 249ths." Amy shrugged, and then her eyes started to light up like a kid at Christmas. "That's real? I mean, that's you?" She turned back to Sam with newfound interest. "You've got a pair of those things?"

"Half a pair. I have half a pair."

"It's a sore point," Steve said.

Amy looked between the two men. She tucked her curiosity about Project Falcon away to be explored sometime in the future, and gathered her courage into a little ball to be released right now.

"You know," she said, "I've told you everything I can about Bucky. Are you going to tell me who he really is now?"

Steve hesitated, eyes taking on a distant, pain-filled glaze, but he nodded his head, staring down at his hands as he began to speak.

"I knew him before. Before I was Captain America. Back when I had nothing. I had Bucky. He was a soldier. A sergeant. His whole unit was captured in '43. That's when Arnim Zola started experimenting on him."

"_Nineteen_ forty-three? We're talking World War Two, aren't we?" Amy whispered. The look from Steve confirmed it. She would have to wrap her head around that later. More importantly, he had been a soldier. Was a soldier. She had known in her heart that was true.

"We were on a mission together. He fell into a ravine."

"From a train," Amy said.

Steve looked startled.

"He had a dream. You were there."

"I thought he was dead." Amy could still hear the pain in Steve's voice, as fresh as if he had lost Bucky just yesterday. "But whatever Zola did to him must have helped him survive. After that he was captured again. They experimented on him, tortured him, brainwashed him. Froze him. Turned him into their tool. A perfect weapon."

"He's not a weapon."

Amy surprised herself with the sharpness of her retort. She certainly surprised Steve and Sam, judging by the way both men were suddenly staring at her. She dropped her gaze and shifted uncomfortably.

"He's not. Not anymore." She shrugged her shoulders. "He's done terrible things, I'm not denying it, but I'd have done them too if I'd gone through what he has. Whatever they did to him- whatever they made him do- ultimately they failed. Because he couldn't kill you, Captain. You saved him."

"Sorry, but how long have you known this guy again?" Sam asked. "He threw me off a goddamn helicarrier!"

"You said he was brainwashed," Amy argued, looking to Steve for help. Now that she knew for a fact the hell Bucky's life had been, she felt desperately protective of him. She could be his shield. If only for a little while. "He's levelling out," she persisted. She shot Sam a small smile. "He hasn't thrown me off a helicarrier."

Sam gave a laugh of disbelief.

"You're almost as bad as him, you know that?" he said, indicating to Steve.

Steve. Who Amy found looking at her with the broadest smile on his face. She blinked uncertainly.

"I'm glad Bucky found you," he said. He handed her a card with a handwritten number scrawled across it. "When he comes back, do you think you could get him to call me?"

"You're not going to wait?"

"I don't want to push him too fast. I think I'm leaving him in good hands. I won't be going far."

Amy nodded her head. She still wasn't sure Bucky was coming back. Wasn't sure that she had the power to persuade him to do this even if he did. But Steve Rogers exuded a sense of hope. Sitting here with him, she believed anything was possible.

"I'll do my best for you, sir."

"No." Steve was still smiling. "You'll do your best for Bucky."


	9. Chapter 9

They found him just after he left the Smithsonian. Just as he was beginning to realise what a monster they'd made of him. He was walking a thin tightrope of control. One push. One tiny push and he was going to fall.

There were only three of them. HYDRA soldiers. They obviously hadn't counted on him adapting to life outside. Expected him to be a pushover after a fortnight without their help. If they'd had any notion of their miscalculation, they would have known that three dozen soldiers wouldn't have been enough to drag him back to hell.

At first he tried to run, tried to avoid the bloodbath that he knew was coming, but they didn't let him escape. They knew how he worked. They knew how to trap him. Corner him. Cage him like an animal.

He didn't break a sweat. But it did short something in his brain. The screaming and the blood. Hit a reset button. And as his mind struggled to reboot, there was only one thought running through his head. The thought. The only thought that he was allowed.

His mission.

Who was his mission?

He scrolled through his memory, what little there was of it that made any sense, until he found a name. The last name. His last mission.

Amy Thomas. S.H.I.E.L.D. engineer.

He didn't remember the brief. But he did remember the face. The address.

He left the bodies lying in the back alley where they had fallen and went to find his target.

There now. Whispered a voice inside his head. Their voice. Wasn't this easier? Not thinking. Not questioning. Just obeying. Better by far to embrace the truth. He was not a man. He was more than a man. A man could not do the things he did. Would not have survived the things he had. Didn't he owe it to his creators to use the gifts that they had given him?

It took no time at all for him to cross the city. But there was a war raging inside his head. Tearing his mind to pieces. His body was working on automatic. That was how he found himself concealed in the garage of a neighbouring house, watching the front door of his mark.

It was from this vantage point that he saw the two men leave the house. He knew those men. The blond one was- was- was- He crushed his head in his hands until the pressure was too much to bear. Another mission? Aborted? The memory of pain splintered up his right arm. And something else. Why couldn't he remember!

He stopped trying.

He had just caught sight of her.

The woman with the limp stepped outside. She smiled and shook the blond man's hand.

Pain splintered through his body again, but this time it hit him in the chest.

He needed to make it stop.

But he couldn't seem to move.

The smile on the woman's face disappeared once she was standing alone. The air was mild, but she wrapped her arms around herself, cast her eyes up and down the street, searching for something. There was a word inside his head. It tasted like snow. And cut like ice. одиноко. How could someone so beautiful look so lonely?

He had to- he needed to-

Make it stop. Make everything stop.

The thoughts turned over and over in his fractured mind, until the sky went dark, and he found himself inside her house. Standing over her as she slept. A lamp on a bedside table had been left on, but she was asleep on a makeshift bed on the floor. The expression on her face was one of contented peace.

He would give her the eternal variety.

Perhaps then the voice screaming inside his head would be silenced too.

He reached down, grabbed her by the throat, and lifted her into the air. Her eyes flew open. She managed to gulp one breath before he slammed her back against the bedroom wall. She struggled against his grip, fingernails clawing helplessly at his metal wrist.

"B-Bucky?"

He leant his weight into her to make her shut up. She choked and bit her lip, reopening an old wound that started to bleed. A thin trickle of blood rolled down her chin and dropped onto his arm. He watched, mesmerised. His grip loosened. Just a fraction. She gasped another breath.

"Please, don't do this. Don't let them win."

A tear hit his arm, mingled with her blood.

Why was he crying?

He had to- he had to-

Kill her.

The voice was back, hissing and persuading. But his fingers wouldn't move, his grip wouldn't tighten. The woman had stopped fighting. She stared back at him, eyes a sea of unnatural calm, resigned to the fate that he chose for her.

"It's okay. Whatever happens, Steve's going to help you."

He dropped her, tore his hands across his face and screamed. The tears kept coming, as he fell apart completely. A moment later, he felt the warm weight of the woman press against his chest. She wound her arms around his waist. He sank to his knees, pulling her down with him. Amy. The red veil lifted from his eyes. He wrapped his arms around her. Almost certainly too tight. And still the tears kept falling. He buried his face in her hair. Breathed her in. Not once did she pull back. He couldn't comprehend her strength.

Amy's touch was fierce and tender, and everything that he hadn't felt for far too many years. He never wanted her to let go. There was a kaleidoscope inside his head shifting every second, until, at last, torturously slowly, his thoughts fell into focus. He was a mess of broken pieces, jagged shards that could never be put back together, but in her arms he felt whole enough to know what he had lost.

"I told you to sleep with your gun."

Bucky spoke the words against the shell of Amy's ear. He would rather she'd put a bullet through his brain than have to live to see the red ring of finger marks that he'd placed around her throat.

"And I told you, I'm a little dopey when someone wakes me up in the middle of the night. Sorry I wasn't more help."

Her voice was hoarse.

God, he could have killed her. His whole body started to tremble.

"Amy-"

"It's okay." She stroked his face with her fingertips. "It's okay. When I came home I stabbed Dan with a pen. He needed five stitches."

She looked so sincere, as though it was any comparison, he almost laughed.

"I could have broken your neck."

"But you didn't."

Amy wiped the tears off his cheeks. Bucky didn't understand why she wasn't running. Except maybe it was because he had her wrapped up in his arms tighter than an Egyptian mummy. He had to let her go. Not yet. She pulled the cap that he had been wearing off his head and pushed his hair out of his eyes.

"I take it the exhibition didn't go too well?"

"I used to be a good man."

"You can be that man again."

"It doesn't work that way, Amy."

"Says who?"

She shifted her weight a little when he failed to find an answer, and he realised that it was probably agony for her to kneel. He loosened his grip, allowed her to stand. Free to leave, Amy simply rolled off her knees and settled at his side.

She sat on the floor, back resting against the foot of her bed, right arm bumping against his left. He could feel her there. Not like she could feel him. Texture was lost to him, temperature too, but pressure, he could feel pressure. So he was aware that Amy was absently tracing the pattern of metal linkages on his wrist with her thumbnail. His fingers twitched. Just for a moment, he remembered what it felt like to reach for a woman's hand.

"I can't do this, Amy."

"Yes, you can." She turned to him. "You're doing it right now."

Bucky shook his head.

"It's too hard."

"What is?"

"Living."

She took a breath, long and deep, and then sighed. He had no right to notice the effect that it had on her body, but she had coupled her grey jogging pants with the tiny blue vest from the night before.

"My dad says life's a test, but I like to think it's a journey. You're just finding the right path again. I don't think it's going to be easy for you, Bucky, but that doesn't mean you can't do it."

She smiled, just a little, but it caused her lip to weep.

"Why are you still trying to help me?" he asked.

"Lots of reasons." Amy's gaze was distant. She dabbed two fingers gently against her lip. "For a start, I should never have let you go to the Smithsonian alone. Of course it was going to be a trigger."

She sounded angry with herself. Bucky wished she would be angry with him instead.

"I don't think it was just the Smithsonian."

"What do you mean?"

"HYDRA found me."

"What?" Amy's voice cracked. All the colour drained out of her face. "Are you okay?"

"No, Amy, I'm not okay. I nearly killed you." He paused, waited for that to finally sink into her head. "I did kill them."

She never gave him the reactions that he anticipated.

"They would have done worse than kill you if you hadn't," she said, looking sad, and small. Her fingers were knotted in the chain of her necklace. The tiny silver cross glinted at Bucky. "People die in wars."

"Is that what this is?"

"It's what it feels like, don't you think?"

"I think I don't understand why everything makes a little more sense when I'm around you."

"It's not me," she said, twisting her hands in her lap. "I'm sure you'd feel the same around anyone who wasn't actively trying to kill you." No. It was her. Bucky wasn't sure of anything. But he was sure it was her. "You just need to meet more people. Good people." Amy slid her gaze to the side. "Captain Rogers was here today."

"No, Amy-"

"He can help you, Bucky."

"He told you that?"

"He wants you to call him."

And then what? They would fill in the blank spaces in his head. And then? What could there be after that? Bucky knew the shapes of the holes in his mind now. Was horribly familiar with them, in fact. Nothing good awaited him. Just pain. Some of it self-inflicted.

He had already decided to leave. There was no staying. Not after tonight. Amy might be willing to play Russian roulette with her life, but he wasn't prepared to take the same risk.

If Rogers wanted to 'help' him, then maybe he also had a plan for what to do with him.

"Tomorrow," Bucky said. Much to Amy's amazement, judging by the look she shot in his direction. "I'll call Rogers tomorrow."


	10. Chapter 10

Amy woke up with a sore throat. She hoped it wasn't the start of a cold. She snuggled into her pillow, but a small frown pinched her brow. Something was missing. What that something was, she wasn't entirely sure. She pulled the blankets more tightly around herself, trying to recapture the delicious feeling of heat that seemed to have dissipated.

Wait, what?

She cracked open an eye. It had been a dream. It had to have been a dream. There was no one left who would hold her as she slept. No one who would lie behind her, drape an arm across her waist, and keep her safe when the nightmares came. Was there?

Bucky.

She lifted her head and looked around her sunlit bedroom. Empty. He had left her in a cocoon of blankets and pillows on the floor and gone… where? Amy pushed off the covers and eased herself up onto her feet. A spasm of pain ripped through what was left of her right calf muscle, but that wasn't what bothered her.

She touched her fingers to her throat. Remembered everything that had happened the previous night. Her thoughts were racing towards a conclusion that she didn't want them to reach.

He was leaving. But had he left?

She listened to the sounds of the house.

Silence.

And then- was that a drawer being opened, a cupboard being shut? Amy smiled. Satisfied, rather than happy. Of course. Bucky couldn't go anywhere without Captain Rogers's phone number. Not that it would take him long to find it.

She marched quickly in the direction of the noises. Back ramrod straight. Relief was not a big enough word to encapsulate how she felt when she found him in the kitchen.

The cookie jar that she used to store little odds and ends was overturned on the table. Crumpled receipts, spare fuses, old business cards, and mismatched nuts and bolts were all spilled across the polished wood. Bucky was fixated on the card in his hand. He didn't even take his eyes off it to look in Amy's direction.

"You could have just asked me for it."

"You were asleep."

And clearly he wished that was still the case. Amy tried not to let it bother her, and knew that she failed miserably.

"Not a big fan of goodbyes?"

Bucky didn't answer. He was still staring at the phone number that Captain Rogers had left.

"I recognise this handwriting."

He still didn't turn around to look at her. But he sounded about ten years old. Lost and confused. It chipped away at Amy's defences. She had promised to help him. What she wanted- what she felt- it didn't matter. Her voice was softer when she next spoke.

"That's good, right? You should recognise it."

He finally turned to look at her, focusing on her face, before his gaze slid down to her neck. She watched the way his jaw set and clenched. She never had bought him that razor.

She wanted to say something to disarm his wounded expression, but she hadn't seen her reflection yet, didn't know how awful she looked. Besides, before she could speak, Bucky's gaze dipped lower. All she could think about then was the way his eyes darkened and her skin burned, as she became hyperaware that she wasn't wearing anything underneath her camisole.

He pulled it together first, eyes returning to her neck, the hungry gleam swept away as though it had never been there at all.

Amy was still busy battling the self-destructive desire to melt into a puddle at his feet.

"Looks painful."

"It's not."

"I'm sorry, Amy."

He sounded sorry. He sounded like hell. Guilt then? Was that the answer to all of her questions this morning? Amy knew plenty about guilt.

"It's okay."

Bucky lifted his eyes to meet hers, a scowl in their depths.

"How is it okay?"

"Well, I'd prefer it not to happen again, but it wasn't your fault."

"How can you stand there and say that?" he asked. Angry. Amy hadn't seen Bucky angry before. He had been annoyed a few times, irritated, deadly even, but not angry. She waited to see if she was afraid. His eyes flashed. "You're not safe around me."

Amy raised an eyebrow, tilted her head, and took two steps towards him.

He moved back.

She followed until she had him pinned against the kitchen counter.

So, no. She was not afraid.

"I don't know who you've had in your head for the last God knows how many years, Bucky, but when it's just you in there, I think I'm pretty safe."

He caught her by surprise when he grabbed the top of her arm with his metal hand and held her where she stood. His touch was cool against her bare skin. Grip firm. Amy was curious to find out what he would do next.

"And when it's not me?" he asked, towering over her.

"Then I know you're in there fighting to kick them out. You did it last night. You can do it again."

Amy gave her arm the smallest of tugs and was instantly released. She rested her hand on her hip and shook her head.

"You came to me for help," she said. "I'm not some fragile little flower. I was a soldier too. I can take whatever you throw at me."

"You don't understand." He dragged his fingers through his hair. Looked a little desperate. He pushed himself away from her and put some distance between them. "I can't hurt you again, Amy."

"It's not you, Bucky. It's HYDRA."

"What difference does that make when it's my hand around your neck?"

"It makes a difference." She didn't know how else to explain it to him. Knew that she would feel the same weight of guilt in his position, but hated seeing him bear it alone. "You'll just have to take my word for it."

"I can't! Do you have any idea what it feels like to be afraid of what you're capable of doing?"

"No. I don't," she said, catching her poor abused lip between her teeth, "but that's why you're going to call Captain Rogers, isn't it?"

Bucky hesitated, and then nodded his head. Amy wanted to wrap her arms around him, to show him all the things that she couldn't say, but she lacked the courage to face his rejection.

Well, at least there was one thing that she was brave enough to say.

"I'm coming with you, you know. Before you let the idea of sneaking off take root."

He narrowed his eyes.

"No, Amy, you're not."

"Remind me, what happened yesterday when you left me behind?" She ignored the bleak look that crossed his face. "HYDRA found you. I'm not leaving you to take them on alone again."

"I can handle HYDRA."

"It's not open for debate. I'll get you safe to Captain Rogers, and then you'll never have to see me again," she said, staring him down. He didn't look pleased, but he didn't try to argue. Amy decided to quit while she was ahead. "I'm going to get dressed." Her feet were frozen from standing on the cold slate floor.

She turned and walked out of the kitchen, but she went through her morning routine with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. She knew her time with Bucky was coming to an end. There was no getting around that fact. She just wanted to make sure she did everything that she possibly could for him while he was still here.

Amy washed and dressed, pulled on a pair of pants and a t-shirt. She coupled the outfit with a scarf and left her hair down to help conceal the bruises on her neck. They didn't look as bad as she'd feared, but she didn't want Bucky to have to keep seeing them.

She paused, caught her eye in the mirror. Realised the assumption she'd made. Was he even still here? She opened her bedroom door and already had the answer. The scent of pancakes and coffee filled her house for the second morning in a row. She walked back to the kitchen with a truly bemused expression on her face. Found the table laid and breakfast prepared. She stared at Bucky in confusion.

"When did you learn how to cook?"

"I watched you."

"Probably not the best way to teach yourself," she mumbled. She took a seat. Still not quite believing her eyes. "You really made me breakfast?"

"Kind of the least I could do for you, Amy."

"Oh. Thank you." She blushed at the wobble in her voice. Bucky placed a plate of fluffy golden pancakes in front of her. He was certainly a quick study. "No one's ever-" She dropped her head and hid behind her hair. It really wasn't wise to finish that confession.

"Treated you right?" he supplied, taking the seat opposite.

"That's not what I was going to say."

She ate her breakfast, aware of the weight of Bucky's gaze.

"How long were you married?"

As non-sequiturs went, it certainly caught Amy off guard.

She swallowed.

"Um, three years?"

"You don't sound very sure."

"Depends what you mean by married, I guess."

Bucky waited for her to continue. Amy blinked at him. All right. She could relay the facts just fine.

"I was deployed to Iraq for my second tour about two years after marrying Dan. That's when I got injured." She rubbed a hand over her thigh. "I spent a lot of time in and out of hospital afterwards. I wasn't really me that last year, so it never seems fair on Dan to count it."

"It never seems fair on _Dan_?"

Amy smiled, slight and apologetic.

"He's not so great with hospitals. And I know I wasn't a whole lot of fun to be around. We didn't see too much of each other."

"But you had someone with you?"

Amy stuffed another forkful of food into her mouth.

"Amy?"

"Mom and Dad were in Ethiopia at the time, and, you know, all the guys I was closest too were dead or still deployed. My old girlfriends from school were all down South still, so- well, I was okay on my own."

Bucky opened his mouth, closed it, pressed his lips tight together.

"I know what you're thinking," she said.

"I doubt it."

"Having someone there. It wouldn't have made it any less horrible." Amy drank her coffee, aware that he was still staring at her. She shifted on her seat. "It doesn't matter. It's ancient history."

"Yeah. I can see how it no longer affects you at all."

"It's a little hard to forget when the reminders are carved into your body."

"Well obviously I wouldn't know anything about that."

Amy dropped her head into her hands.

"Sorry. Bucky." She looked at him through her fingers. "See, this is why I don't talk about it. I just end up upsetting people."

"You think the fact you forgot this upsets me?" he asked, shrugging his left shoulder.

"Your arm's amazing. My leg's just a mess," she said.

Bucky was frowning. She could tell from his face that he had something to say. She didn't know if she was brave enough to hear what it was so she saved him the trouble of putting his thoughts into words.

"Thank you for being so good about it, by the way." She licked her lips. "Everyone else just freaks out."

"Everyone?"

Amy swallowed. Yes. She wanted to say. Everyone. Everyone who was meant to love her regardless of what she looked like or what she'd been through. Including herself, sometimes. But of course she didn't say that, she had already said far more than she'd meant to this morning. She sipped her coffee instead, and flicked through the pile of bills that Josh had dropped off the day before.

"What will you do?" Bucky asked.

"Pardon?"

"Afterwards. After today."

Amy shrugged.

"Find a new job. Finish restoring my car. Maybe get a cat." She caught sight of the new frown that Bucky was starting to wear. "What's wrong with that?"

"It's just- it seems kind of a waste of your life."

Amy lay down the mail. Gave him her full attention. She supposed she should have put the pieces together sooner, but she'd had quite a lot on her mind lately. She turned her thoughts over in her head. Liking the feel of them. If James Barnes had once been Steve Rogers's best friend, it had to go without saying that he must have been a man of integrity. One of the good guys. One of the best.

She had to get Bucky back to Steve so he could know that too. She hoped it would help him more than it hurt.

"What is it?" he asked, watching her face.

"Sorry. Nothing." Amy shook her head. "Well, no, it is something. You know that good man you mentioned last night? The one you said you used to be," she asked. "I have the funniest feeling I'm eating breakfast with him."

"That man's dead, Amy."

She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and pushed it across the table towards him. This was going to be hard, but she was oddly okay with being collateral damage.

"Call your friend, Bucky. I think he might disagree."


	11. Chapter 11

"Arlington National Cemetery?"

Bucky didn't think the look of disbelief on Amy's face would have been any greater if he'd asked her to drive him to the moon.

"Yes."

She continued to stare at him, shifted her weight from one foot to the other.

"You're sure he said-"

"Call him back, if you don't believe me."

He threw Amy her phone. She caught it, but simply slipped it back into the pocket of her pants.

"I believe you. It's just- did he give any other instructions?"

"Just the name of the street where he wants to meet."

"That's it?" Amy folded her arms loosely across her chest. "Seems pretty morbid."

"I think it's kind of fitting."

Bucky had exchanged perhaps fifteen words with Steve Rogers. Hard, awkward, stilted words. He was already starting to doubt himself. It wasn't too late to run. Vanish. He forced himself to look at Amy. Reminded himself that he was a ticking time bomb with no idea what might set him off next. Or who would get hurt when he exploded.

"Okay. Great. So you're both as crazy as each other." She grabbed a set of keys off a hook on the wall, and avoided his eyes. "The garage isn't locked. You go on ahead. I need to fetch a jacket."

Bucky thought about waiting. About arguing. He definitely thought about going on alone. But he saw an entire lifetime of solitude stretching out in front of him. Felt as though he had already lived at least one lifetime in isolation. What difference did one more hour with Amy make after everything that had already happened?

So he did as she asked. Left the kitchen. Left the house.

The street outside was empty. Quiet too, aside from the sound of dogs barking nearby.

Bucky opened the door to the garage and paused for a moment on the threshold. There were two cars facing him. A large shiny black SUV and- he rubbed the back of his neck, staring at the other vehicle.

It was a Dodge D-14 convertible coupe, circa 1940. He had no idea how he knew that, but know it he did. The car was missing its wheels, and its windshield. He looked under the hood, half the engine seemed to be gone too. He could tell where Amy had started work though, pouring her time and care into the car, slowly bringing it back to life.

He pulled his gaze away, walked the length of the garage, ended up at what could only be Amy's workbench. She had three notepads lying open, each full of handwritten notes and little technical diagrams. He flicked through one. Put it down. Attention caught by something else.

His mind was wandering. Struggling to focus. Searching for a distraction. Amy had screwed a noticeboard to the wall. Here were all the homely touches that were missing from her house. Old concert tickets. Postcards from friends. Her military dog tags. And a collage of photos.

Amy smiling. Laughing. Amy as a kid. Brown hair in bunches. Riding a horse. Climbing all over a tractor. Amy in full dress uniform. In fatigues. In a swimsuit on the beach. Amy sitting on the hood of a car, shielding her eyes from the sun.

His fingers ached to steal a souvenir.

"I'd like to point out that wasn't my idea."

Bucky glanced over his shoulder.

"Just in case you'd decided I'm some kind of closet narcissist," Amy added. She came to stand at his side. Wrinkled her nose at the photos. "My therapist made me do it. Something to do with the 'cognitive retention of positive experiences'."

"Happy memories," said Bucky, voice low.

"Something like that." Amy nudged his arm with her elbow. He looked down at her. Body prickling with awareness. She offered him a smile. "See, I do have some. So you don't have to worry about me." How did she know he was worried, when he hadn't known it himself? "Now, it's your turn," she said, giving his hand a short tug. "Let's go find your memories, Bucky."

He saw the gun under Amy's jacket when she turned to walk back to the SUV. Couldn't explain why it unnerved him to see that she had finally taken his advice about arming herself seriously. Perhaps it was simply the fact that if Amy had cause to use her weapon today, he would have failed her in some fundamental way.

He followed her to the car and climbed into the passenger's seat. She already had the engine running. She shifted it into gear, pulled out of the garage and onto the street. Bucky watched the house in the mirror until it disappeared. Wondered if he would ever see it again? His gaze shifted to the woman at his side. Or for that matter, if he would ever see Amy again.

..ooOOoo..

It took twenty minutes to reach the national cemetery. Amy turned on the radio after the first five. Bucky didn't know if she did that to hide the fact that neither one of them was speaking. He turned his head and stared out of the window, trying not to think about what awaited him at the end of the journey.

Arlington National Cemetery was imposing from the first approach. Grand and sombre and important. Amy pulled up in front of a building that was signposted as the visitor centre.

"I'm not supposed to drive any further."

Bucky frowned and sank low in his seat. It was much busier than he had anticipated. There were people everywhere. People and barriers and armed security guards.

"Stay here," Amy said, as she unfastened her seatbelt. He'd grabbed her before he even knew what he was thinking. She looked at him, raised an eyebrow beneath her bangs. The whole of her forearm was engulfed by his metal fist. "Trust me. You walking in there. Not a good idea. I won't be long."

He let go. Let her go. Watched her walk away.

The entire time Amy was out of his sight, Bucky was on edge. Not because he was waiting to be spotted, or to be recognised. Not even because he was waiting for HYDRA to appear.

In fact, he refused to examine the reason why at all.

But he knew when he started to relax. When Amy returned, fifteen minutes later, a piece of paper in her hand.

He stared at her in question, as she got back into the car.

"Visitor's pass," she said. "It'll let us drive into the cemetery."

"How did you get it?"

"Some of my best friends are buried here. It's not the first time I've paid a visit."

"I'm sorry."

"Me too." Amy sighed. "It's okay. They would have wanted to help." She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. "So, now we just have to get you passed the security guard over there. I vote you don't let Captain Rogers pick your meeting places in future."

"No one noticed me yesterday."

"Apart from HYDRA."

"Apart from them."

Amy shot an agonised glance in Bucky's direction and started the engine. Oddly, her anxiety focused him, grounded him, and awoke an age old desire to protect.

He did his best to look calm, as Amy drove up to a bored security guard. People rarely saw what they didn't expect. Bucky already knew that. He didn't believe for one second that the man actually read what was on the piece of paper, let alone that he checked the occupants of the car, before he waved them through the checkpoint.

Amy started to breathe a little easier.

"Glad we didn't have to put the bulletproof glass to the test."

"You drive a bulletproof car?" Bucky asked, incredulous.

Amy gave her shoulders a little shrug.

"S.H.I.E.L.D. didn't want it anymore. It's only a prototype."

"For what?"

"One of the best cars I've ever designed." He didn't understand why she looked so heartbroken, and then she added, "It was written off recently."

He looked at her. Looked around at the interior of the car. There was something vaguely familiar about it, now that he was paying attention.

"Where exactly am I headed?" Amy asked, and Bucky lost his train of thought.

She drove for another five minutes, following his directions, heading away from the crowds of tourists and mourners. She stopped in the middle of a deserted stretch of road, flanked on either side by gravestones. He caught her staring out of the window, expression bleak. She turned her head just in time to realise that she was being watched. Looked away again.

"You okay?" he asked.

A burst of surprised laughter escaped her lips and her head snapped back towards him.

"That's my line."

"I'm borrowing it."

"I'll be fine," she said, composing herself. "Will you?"

The low throb of a motorcycle engine filled their quiet corner of the cemetery, just before Steve Rogers drove into sight. He stopped at the far end of the road.

"I guess I'm about to find out."

Bucky wasn't sure what hope felt like anymore, but he thought it was possible that the broken mess inside his chest made room for just a sliver of it. Strange. He had to get out of the car. Knew it, but couldn't move. That was when Amy reached out and touched his hand with her fingertips.

"Before you go, I just want you to know, I'm glad to have met you, Sergeant Barnes." She glanced sideways, summoned one last smile for him. "If you ever need a mechanic, you know where to find me."

"Amy."

He searched her face. Didn't want it to be one of the things that he forgot. The bruises on her skin were almost healed. The marks he'd left around her throat, concealed by a scarf. It was just her bottom lip that was still so obviously injured. He told himself that was why his gaze lingered on her mouth. He saw her swallow, watched her lips part a fraction, and then she disarmed him completely by placing a chaste kiss against the rough stubble of his jaw.

"Goodbye."

The farewell was whispered against his skin.

He hardly recognised the word. His body, so starved of affection, was too consumed in savouring the fleeting sensation of her caress.

"You've got a life to reclaim." Amy nodded her head in Steve's direction. "And all those answers you're looking for are standing out there."

True. So why the reluctance to leave?

He couldn't want this woman.

At least, he shouldn't…

"Thank you," he said.

There were those two alien words again.

"Go."

Bucky obeyed her final order like a model soldier. Packed her memory neatly into one of the empty compartments of his mind to be taken out and examined later. He closed the distance between Amy's car and Steve's bike with strong, steady strides. Scanned his surroundings out of the corners of his eyes as he walked.

Just in case.

A fact that was not lost on Steve.

"Expecting a welcoming party?"

"I wouldn't blame you."

Bucky frowned, regarded the blond man in front of him. He knew him. And now he knew how he knew him. But the pieces still didn't quite fit.

"I thought you were dead," said Steve.

"I thought you were smaller."

Steve laughed, short and sudden, and jammed his hands into his pockets.

"I've heard that before."

Yes. There was an echo in Bucky's head too. Distant and distorted, but it was definitely there. Like trying to remember a dream.

"What happens now?" he asked.

"You want to know who you are, right?"

Bucky nodded.

He did want to know, despite the fact that knowing might be worse than not knowing. He didn't think he was a coward, didn't think that had ever been one of his crimes. So he had to face his demons. He had to know the very worst before he could know whether or not he was strong enough to survive it.

Steve seemed to understand what he was thinking.

"We'll take it slow," he said. "Maybe start with a haircut. You leave the army for a few years and start thinking you can dress like a bum."

The corner of Bucky's mouth actually twitched, part smirk, part smile.

"I could be wrong, but I don't remember taking fashion advice from you before."

"No, you weren't big on listening to my advice."

"Really?" Bucky asked. He looked up at the sky. A lifetime of sights and sounds, moments and memories, were tickling the fringes of his mind. For the moment, they mostly had a safe warm glow to them. The bad days, the terrible things, they hadn't happened with this man. Bucky let his words form slowly before speaking them. "I would have sworn it was the other way around."

Steve was starting to smile.

"You remember that?"

"Just a feeling…"

"You should listen to it. You've got good instincts." Steve clapped him on the shoulder. The one that wasn't made of metal. And then he grabbed him, and pulled him into a bone-crushing hug. "I missed you, Bucky."

He stood still. Didn't know how to react. Couldn't return the embrace. Until something clicked. And he realised, he wasn't the only one who was lost.

"Me too."


	12. Chapter 12

Amy tossed her car keys down onto the kitchen table. So now what? Bucky was gone. No. Sergeant Barnes was gone. She had to do something to distance herself from him in her head. It hurt too much otherwise.

So, Sergeant Barnes was gone. Captain Rogers was going to fix him in all the important ways that she hadn't known how. And she- she was going to pick herself up and start her life all over again. He wasn't coming back. Men like him did not come back for women like her.

And she couldn't want him to… She wouldn't- she wouldn't be able to give him all the things that he deserved. She wasn't… enough. She twisted her hands in front of her stomach. They were both of them too damaged. Two broken pieces that didn't make a whole.

Despite knowing that, logically, in her head, she still wondered what might have happened if she had been brave enough to kiss his lips. Would he have kissed her back, or pushed her away?

Pushed her away, she told herself.

That half empty glass of hers wouldn't allow delusions. Any glimmer of interest that Amy thought he had shown in her had always been ruthlessly supressed. She didn't trust her intuition anymore. Had probably concocted the whole thing in her head.

"Fourth time?" she said aloud.

It couldn't be, could it? This wasn't world ending, it was just- just- Amy gave up trying to qualify it.

She didn't know what to do. Had no desire to do… anything. So, she headed for the living room. Surely she could allow herself one day to vegetate in front of the TV after everything that had happened? Tomorrow. She would face the world again tomorrow.

"Hello, Agent Thomas."

Instinct more than training took over, but Amy's reflexes were fast. She drew her gun and aimed it at the man who was sitting in the middle of her sofa. He was wearing a very expensive suit and appeared to be drinking champagne from a flute that Amy was sure wasn't hers.

"Who the hell are you?" she asked.

"My name is Karl Kraus." He smiled affably, raised his glass in a toast in her direction. "You may recognise me? We worked alongside each other on Project Insight."

"Can't say I recall."

Amy primed her weapon.

"You have upset some friends of mine."

"Can't say I care."

Amy didn't realise that there was another man standing behind her until her legs were kicked out from under her. A shot fired wildly from her gun as she fell, the bullet striking the wall opposite. She hit the ground hard. The impact jarred through her whole body. Sending sharp flashes of pain shooting through her limbs. She tried to scramble to her feet, but was winded by a punch to her already injured ribs. The gun was wrestled from her hands.

Her assailant used it to fire a warning shot.

Straight through her right shoulder.

Kraus got up and stood over Amy as she bled out on the carpet. She didn't have the strength to lift her head, but her eyes followed him. It was becoming hard to breathe. She started to shake. Darkness spotting her vision.

"You will be happy to hear I am giving you the opportunity to make it up to them."

..ooOOoo..

_It was the sounds that came first… a huge boom that she felt in every single cell of her body… the scream of metal ripping apart… and then the much more horrifying sounds of human bodies breaking._

_The world span out of control. Everything was covered in light, and heat, and dust. _

_She was lying in the dirt. Had been thrown clear of the Humvee by the explosion. So she had to watch the flames engulf it. _

_Her Sergeant had somehow managed to escape from the vehicle. He was yelling. Words she couldn't hear over the ringing in her ears. And he was bleeding. Trying to get the other men out. She saw his hands melt when he tried frantically to open the smashed door. _

_Her stomach heaved when she finally heard the screams coming from inside the mangled, molten mess._

_They would haunt her for whatever remained of her life._

_She had to help. She struggled to her feet. Fell. Struggled again. Fell. Looked down at her legs to see why she couldn't stand. She supposed they were her legs. Twisted, bloody, broken. She could see where the bone had punctured both skin and fabric. And blood. There was so much blood. But surprisingly little pain._

_A detached part of her brain knew that she should be able to feel the heat from the fire. But her body was cold. Freezing inside. Shutting down._

_Dying._

_They were coming under enemy fire. She didn't see the moment the Sergeant fell. Only knew that one second he was standing, and the next he had been blown apart. Followed by the final explosion of the Humvee. She would join them soon._

"_C-C-Corporal?"_

_A voice called for her help. And suddenly she wasn't alone. Had to hang on a little bit longer._

_The Private had been thrown through the windshield. She crawled through the dirt on her stomach to reach him, dragging her legs behind her. He was nineteen. Had only been flown in from home three days ago. Shamefully, she couldn't remember his name. But then, she wasn't sure what hers was anymore either._

_His eyes rolled in their sockets._

"_I c-can't move! I can't move!"_

_A bullet hit the ground not an inch from his head. Showering them both with earth. She couldn't think about his injuries. About making them worse. Could they get worse? She didn't know. She had to drag him out of range of the gunfire. Find cover. It took everything she had and more. She was slipping into blackness when she heard it._

_The unmistakable thunder of a Chinook helicopter coming to their rescue._

..ooOoo..

When Amy managed to open her eyes she was lying on the floor in a dark metal cell. There was a single florescent light flickering on the ceiling. No window to give her a clue as to where she might be or how much time had passed. Her body hurt like hell and her mouth felt like it was full of sawdust. She shakily tried to push herself into a sitting position, tried not to lose the contents of her stomach, and told herself that on no account was she going to fall apart.

She pressed a hand under her t-shirt. Someone had bound her gunshot wound, but her fingers came away red and tacky. She flexed her arm - elbow, wrist, fingers - shards of pain ran up and down the limb, but she thanked the Lord that she could still move everything.

Five years ago, Amy had thought she was dead. The insurgents who had taken out so many of her friends should have killed her too. So this was okay. She'd always been on borrowed time. And she'd done one or two good things in the extra time that she'd been given. Bucky's face flashed in front of her eyes. She squeezed them tightly shut. Maybe he was the reason that she had been allowed to live? If so, her life, it hadn't been a complete waste.

If she could just manage to die well. That was all she could ask for now. She reached up to touch her necklace, but found that it was gone.

The harsh grinding of metal on metal alerted Amy to the fact that she had a visitor. Kraus appeared in the doorway of her cell. Dressed more practically today. He was flanked by two men with automatic rifles. With the door now open, Amy could hear someone somewhere screaming. A cold sweat broke out across her skin. She hated herself for feeling so afraid.

"Good. You are finally awake." He laughed. "I sometimes forget how much longer it takes an ordinary human to recover from a little physical persuasion." Kraus circled the cell with the air of a man taking a pleasure stroll. "Tell me, how did you like our Winter Soldier?"

Amy finally deigned to acknowledge the presence of her kidnapper.

"He's not yours anymore."

"No? Do you think you have tamed him?" He laughed again, a high unnatural sound. "We just have to wipe him clean and he will kill you without even blinking." He smiled pleasantly.

"He's with the Captain. You're never getting your filthy hands on him again."

Amy spat the words with more venom than sense.

"Is that what you think? Interesting. But that is not why you are here."

Amy waited.

"You worked on Project Insight. You worked alongside some of HYDRA's best scientists and engineers. I admit, you slipped under our radar. We did not get around to recruiting you before the project- well-"

"Before the project failed?" Amy finished the sentence for him. "Is that what this is? A recruitment drive? It could use a little work."

"Do you know how many operatives we lost when Captain America destroyed the helicarriers?" Kraus asked. For the first time, Amy saw his charming façade crack. "You are a talented engineer, Agent Thomas. You must enjoy building things. Help us build a better future. What do you say?"

Amy mustered as much dignity as she could manage, cowering on the ground, covered in blood and dirt.

"No, thanks."

Kraus smiled his sickly smile, and then he brought his foot down hard on her right leg, increased the pressure until at least one metal pin splintered off bone.

Amy couldn't even scream for the pain.

He turned and headed for the door, leaving her writhing on the floor.

"I will leave you to reconsider."


	13. Chapter 13

_"_…_when skies are cloudy and grey. They're only grey for a day. So wrap your troubles in dreams. And dream your troubles away…"_

Bucky lifted the arm of the gramophone and the dulcet tones of Bing Crosby's voice stopped mid-song. Silence restored to the apartment, he moved to take a seat in one of Steve's armchairs, but caught sight of his reflection in the mirror that hung on the wall on his way to sit down.

He paused.

Stared back at himself.

With his face cleanly shaven, and wearing new clothes that actually fit, he almost looked like the man in the old photos that Steve had shown him the night before. Almost. It was his eyes that gave him away. Much more so than his hair, or even his arm. It was impossible for him to look into them for longer than a few seconds. The death and torment in their depths was too much to take in larger doses.

He dropped his gaze and continued his journey to the armchair. It had been a week since Arlington. Since Steve had helped him lift the lid on the can of worms that was his life. Every day new memories resurfaced. Sometimes good. Usually bad. Bucky needed help picking apart the truth from the lies.

Except it turned out that it was all true.

Every single sickening detail.

Steve accepted it all without one word of complaint. Along with his friend's rage and despair.

Bucky wondered if the guy was aiming for a sainthood when he was through being Captain America.

He wasn't so good at dealing with the knowledge that he was a cold-blooded killer. Wished he could simply turn himself off. He spent a lot of time sleeping. Badly. Steve claimed it was cathartic. Bucky couldn't bring himself to confess that he always woke up feeling worse. He was hoping for oblivion, but the clearest memories came to him in dreams. Sometimes he knew they were coming, recognised the aching tug at the front of his head that told him so. He refused to run from them however, tried to prepare himself instead, but he never succeeded.

At least he didn't always dream about death.

Sometimes he was back in Brooklyn. At a dance hall. A baseball game. Sometimes he was just walking down the streets that he'd known as a kid.

His cheeks were always streaked with tears after those dreams.

He wasn't that man anymore. Didn't believe there was anything of the old Bucky left, but he was slowly starting to remember him. It was a little like recalling an old friend that he'd known a long time ago. The cocky confidence, bordering on arrogance. The love he'd felt for the man who was determined to help him now. He was starting to remember…

And then one night, just one, Bucky had been granted a real dream. Not flashes of a twisted memory, or pictures of a blood-stained crime. He had dreamed about a blue-eyed brunette, and how it would feel to lay her under him. To have her wrap herself around him and welcome him into her body. He'd woken hard, and covered in sweat, convinced he could taste her on his lips.

She was the one thing that he tried to forget.

Bucky realised he was staring blankly into space, thinking about how he wasn't going to think about her, when he heard the door of Steve's apartment open.

He grabbed the laptop that sat on the coffee table and flipped it open. Absently hit a few keys. Attempting to look busy. Steve had suggested that he start brushing up on the decades of history that he'd missed. It seemed a small enough request to make. Steve was still catching up on things himself, and a part of Bucky actually enjoyed being the first one to learn something new.

Bucky liked the Internet, in fact, he liked all the new technology. Apparently he'd always had a passing interest in that side of life. So he'd been told anyway. Steve had mentioned something about going to the World's Expo. That had been one of the rare occasions when Bucky had seen him genuinely smile.

"How is everything?" Steve asked, appearing in the doorway, as if on cue.

It was only the second time that he had left Bucky in the apartment alone. He looked around the room a little warily.

Bucky raised one eyebrow.

"I managed not to cause the end of civilization while you were gone."

"Funny." Steve dropped a bag of groceries on the table. "What are you looking at?" he asked.

"Iraq."

Apparently.

Bucky didn't actually remember keying in that search term.

"The country?"

"The 2003-2011 war."

"Why?" asked Steve. His expression shifted to one of concern. "Did you remember something else? Do you think you were there?"

"No."

Steve sighed.

"So what, you thought you needed a few more demons in your head?"

"These aren't mine," Bucky replied quietly.

See, this was what happened to him when he thought about- not thinking about- her. He was pleased when Steve's pocket beeped and distracted him.

He watched out of the corner of his eye as Steve read a message on his cell phone, but he couldn't quite decipher the new expression on the other man's face.

"Problem?" he asked.

"Sam's waiting downstairs."

Sam Wilson was someone else that Bucky had tried to kill.

Sam was better at holding a grudge than Steve.

He had appeared two days previously, and as far as Bucky had been able to tell, the sole purpose of his flying visit was to ascertain whether or not Steve was still alive.

"What's he waiting for?" Bucky asked.

"To see if we want to go with him to visit your girl Amy."

Bucky did a quick calculation in his head. No. It was probably not okay to punch the perceptive look off Steve's face.

"No."

"No?" The look on Steve's face slid into one of uncertainty anyway. "What do you mean 'no'? I know you haven't talked to me about her, but I thought you'd want to see her. I thought she helped you?"

"She did. A lot."

And then he'd gone and strangled her.

And then she'd helped him a little bit more.

He snapped the laptop shut, rubbed a hand across his jaw. Brushing away the ghost of her lips.

"It's complicated."

"You're telling me she wouldn't want to see you?"

Bucky didn't have an answer ready for that question.

Steve seized on his hesitation.

"Sam wants Amy to check out his Falcon wings. She sounded pretty keen on seeing them last week."

Bucky flexed his fingers, listened to the gears grind. Yeah. She would, wouldn't she? It was a real shame that Sam had managed to salvage those things, because Bucky could just imagine the glow of pure excitement that would light Amy's face when she got her hands on them.

Something a little dark, and a little primitive tapped him on the shoulder.

He tried to shake it off.

"I know what's bothering you," said Steve.

"I doubt it."

"You're scared of hurting her. But I promise, you're not going to hurt her by going to see her. I think you might by staying away though."

"How do you-?" Bucky couldn't even finish his sentence.

"Best friend, remember." Steve's sudden smile was bittersweet. "Try to keep up."

..ooOOoo..

Steve had told Bucky that he had good instincts. Well, the moment that Sam stopped his car outside Amy's house, Bucky knew something was wrong. Very wrong. He climbed out of the car without even checking to make sure it was safe. He was followed by Steve and Sam, who had to quicken their pace to catch up with him.

"Bucky?"

He didn't answer, not with words. But he did nod at Amy's mail box, which was overflowing with letters and junk mail. The front door was closed, but when he turned the door handle it swung open, unlocked. He already knew she wasn't home. Couldn't feel her presence. The house was as quiet as a grave. He moved silently through the hall to the kitchen. Steve and Sam were at his heel. Tense and alert. Though he doubted either of them felt sick to the pit of their stomach. Sam peeled off to the right, but Steve stuck close behind him.

Bucky realised he was the only one who knew that everything was exactly the same as the morning that Amy had driven him to Arlington. The same dishes were on the draining board. The same flowers, now wilted, in a vase on the windowsill. The keys on the kitchen table were the only sign that she had returned at all. He picked them up, weighed them in his hand. The beat of his heart against his chest was like a bass drum.

"Maybe she decided to go out of town for a while?" Steve suggested, but it didn't sound like his heart was in it.

"Hey, Steve! You need to see this," said Sam, calling from the living room. Bucky and Steve followed the sound of his voice. Sam was standing on a chair, digging something out of the wall with a pocketknife. "Bullet," he said, as he threw it to Steve, who looked at it, and then showed it to Bucky.

"What do you think? Looks like it came from a handgun."

"Amy was carrying one the morning I met you."

"All right." Steve's tone was anything but all right, and Bucky was fully aware that he was being watched by the other two men as though he was going to snap. He didn't blame them. There was a distinct possibility that he might shatter. "Let's assume it's Amy's," Steve continued. "It looks like she was standing in the doorway where you are," he said, pointing to Bucky. "Aiming at someone sitting on the sofa opposite. But something caused her to misfire?"

"She was tackled from behind."

Bucky was relieved to hear the cool clinical sound of his voice.

"You think so?"

Yes. He couldn't count the number of times that he had seen Amy jump in surprise at finding him behind her. She wouldn't have stood a chance if someone actually snuck up on her with the intent of attacking.

He could see it so clearly.

Her leg would have given way… her arms would have lifted as she fell… fingers tightening instinctively… loosening the bullet into the plasterwork above her target's head.

Bucky knelt down. The carpet was a little damp. Someone had gone to the trouble of cleaning it. But not very well. Because there was Amy's necklace. He picked it up, tried to swallow passed the lump in his throat. He ran his hand through the cut pile again, stopping dead when he found the hole. He needed to use his left hand to pry the second bullet from the floorboard.

"Christ," Steve swore.

"HYDRA," Bucky growled, crushing the slug in his clenched fist. Why hadn't he been thinking about the danger she was in? But he knew why. Because he had been trying so hard not to think about her at all. He had curtailed any thought that made him remember Amy. "They went after her the day you took down S.H.I.E.L.D."

"What? Why?"

He was struggling to access those locked memories.

They had been in this room. Amy nervy, reluctant to confide in him.

"She told me she worked on Project Insight. Helped design the carriers. Said someone called Hill asked for her help. Wanted to know if it was possible to disable them."

Steve looked about as well as Bucky felt, he glanced anxiously at Sam.

"They're going to want to kill her."

"If she's not already- you know."

"No. They'll want to use her," said Bucky.

He felt physically sick at the thought. Although not quite so sick as if he started imagining her already dead.

"How'd they even find her?" asked Sam.

"The same way we did, maybe?" Steve replied. "The whole of S.H.I.E.L.D. was compromised remember."

And HYDRA had waited until he was out of the picture before coming for her, Bucky realised.

He had thought he was protecting Amy by leaving. He had thought she would be safe. Clearly he wasn't quite ready to start thinking for himself yet. If she didn't walk away from this in one piece, he didn't know if he was going to be able to handle it. He closed his fist around her necklace, welcoming the stab of the silver cross into the palm of his hand.

"You've got to help me find her, Steve."

"I know." Steve pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. Dialled a number. It seemed to ring only once. "Natasha. I need a favour."


	14. Chapter 14

Why was she still alive?

Surely death should have come for her by now.

Amy found living an increasing struggle. She could never quite seem to catch her breath. Her shoulder was on fire. And her leg, well, she couldn't really feel her leg anymore, which should have been terrifying, but was actually kind of a relief.

She was given a bowl of mush and a beaker of water once a day. She presumed it was once a day. It was still impossible to keep track of time in the windowless cell. And her jailers seemed to vary when they fed her just to add to her disorientation. The hunger she could endure, for the moment at least, but the thirst was driving her insane.

Dehydration would have set in by now, of that she was certain.

And she knew she was starting to lose her grip on reality, because she hadn't even noticed Kraus's arrival today.

He had brought a chair. Amy watched him settle onto the seat through half-closed eyes. She had dragged herself into the corner and was using the two walls to keep herself sitting upright. The guards stayed outside for these 'visits' now. Well aware that Amy was too weak to pose a threat to their HYDRA superior.

"I know you think we cannot hurt you anymore, Agent Thomas," said Kraus. He was staring at something that he held in his hand. "You are wrong, incidentally. But your own pain does not seem to motivate you." He rubbed the side of his nose. Amy waited, drew a few shallow breaths, tried to stop shivering. "So I have been thinking, whose pain can we use to motivate you?"

She found the question more frightening than anything that had happened so far.

"Not talking today?" Kraus smiled. "I am not sure of the answer myself. Your ex-husband, I considered. Or perhaps your parents? They are doing missionary work in Uganda, yes? Such a dangerous calling." He paused for a moment, let the weight of his words crush Amy. "But then this idea struck me."

He tossed a piece of paper in her direction. She moved her eyes rather than her head to look down at it. No, not a piece of paper, a photograph.

Amy's brow furrowed in confusion. Had the hallucinations finally started then?

She hoped that's what it was- hoped she wasn't really looking at a photograph of Josh, her eight year old neighbour, playing on his front lawn.

Amy leant her head back against the wall and closed her eyes. Afraid if she left them open they would betray the fear that was seeping into her heart, a heart that she had worked so hard to numb since waking up in this hell.

"You still have nothing to say?"

Antagonising your captor was not something that you should ever do. Someone had told her that once.

"You sick son of a bitch."

The insult hung in the air between them.

She wanted Kraus to lose his temper. Lose control. Kill her. Because if she was dead she couldn't put anyone in danger ever again.

But she didn't get the response she'd predicted.

Kraus's laughter turned her stomach.

"You amuse me, Agent Thomas," he said. "Do you truly not see? The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. We still have Zola's algorithm. We simply need a new launch pad."

Amy willed her eyes open and stared at him in silence. Telling him no without words.

"Do not make me kill this boy to prove my point."

"Stop it!" She heard her voice break, felt something inside herself snap. "Josh doesn't have anything to do with this."

"He does now. Unless you start cooperating."

"I- can't."

"You know you have to say yes."

Amy was a ball of string, unravelling. Josh was just a kid. Just a sweet innocent kid who had the misfortune to live next door to her. She squeezed her eyes shut, felt she deserved the stab of pain that came with every breath.

"Anything you make me build- it won't be enough- they'll find a way to stop you." She kept trying to fight. But now she knew the battle was lost. She wasn't strong enough. Maybe she had never been strong enough. But there were others who were. "There are too many heroes in the world these days."

"Heroes?" he said. "Their time has passed."

No. That wasn't true. Couldn't be true. Amy still believed in heroes.

They didn't even have to be 'super'. She believed in people. Decent people. Good men and women.

And one man who had been good and could be again.

She shouldn't have let her heart thaw. Because now the real pain started. She prayed that Bucky had already forgotten about her. Captain Rogers would keep him busy. Occupied. Surely there would be no time to recall the short days that they had shared when he had a whole lifetime to remember?

Because it would hurt him, if he ever found out about this, and Amy never wanted anything to hurt him ever again.

"It is a childish fantasy to which you cling."

Kraus's voice sliced through her thoughts.

"Hope isn't childish," Amy whispered.

"What hope do you have, Agent Thomas? Your life is a series of failures. You should thank me for giving you the opportunity to be part of something greater." He paused, regarded her. Amy knew she was betrayed by her own wounded expression. "Yes, I have looked into your life in more detail since you became our guest. There was one element of success that I found intriguing."

Amy couldn't imagine what that might be, but she knew it wouldn't be anything good.

"Your encounters with the Winter Soldier. Most curious. Our reports state that his arm was working at sixty-seven percent capacity when he first escaped from us. When our men engaged him two weeks later, when our data predicted a drop to thirty-eight percent capacity, we were surprised to find the function of his arm had been fully restored. How do you think that happened?"

Amy tried to swallow, but her mouth was too dry.

"You miscalculated?"

"I think you fixed him. I do not think you could help yourself. I think it is what you do." Amy didn't much care for the way he looked at her as he made that deduction. He leant back in his seat and rapped his knuckles on the door of the cell. One of the guards appeared. "Bring her to the workshop."

The man walked towards Amy. She shrank away from his hands, to no avail. She almost passed out when he pulled her roughly to her feet and the sensation flooded back into her leg. She could only sob in agony as she was dragged through corridors and upstairs.

It looked like they were in an underground bunker. But the impression that Amy got was hazy, she was only just hanging onto the cusp of consciousness. They entered a room and the guard dropped her onto a plastic computer chair, where she sat slumped, all but defeated.

Kraus had followed.

"We can heal you, you know. Once we are sure you are going to cooperate."

He nodded at the machinery that dominated the room. Amy had no choice but to follow his gaze. Not when he grabbed a fistful of her hair and forced her to lift her head. She was too exhausted, too out of breath to even vocalise her pain.

But she hoped the machine wasn't what she thought it was- because she thought she was looking at a page out of Bucky's past. No, not a page. A whole chapter.

There was a chair in the middle of the room, a little like something you might find in a dentist's surgery. If your dentist also happened to be some sort of sick sadist. It was a good job her stomach was empty, because the metal restraints on its arms and legs made Amy want to vomit. There were wires too, and some kind of halo device, all connected to a huge bank of computers. Computers from the depths of history, huge machines that occupied at least twelve square feet of floor space, filling the room from floor to ceiling.

Her head started to spin.

"What do you think?"

"I think it's a torture device."

Kraus laughed.

"Some of the men wanted to use it on you," he said pleasantly. "How attached are you to your brain? To your sense of self? I have requested your cooperation up until now, Agent Thomas. I can take the choice away from you."

Amy stared at Kraus, stared at the machine- it was fifty years old, perhaps- she tested her next sentence out in her head before speaking it aloud.

"It doesn't work anymore, does it?"

Kraus's lip twitched. A miniscule movement that Amy would have missed had she not been waiting for it. He covered the slip with one of his smiles.

"It was shipped over from Europe fifteen years ago. You are correct in thinking that it is not the latest model. That model is- well, temporarily out of our hands. I think I would like you to upgrade this machine for your first assignment."

"Why would I do that?" Amy asked.

"Because little Joshua will die if you do not."

"I don't know how." Honesty and fear compelled Amy to speak.

"Then I suggest you work it out quickly."

"And if I can't?"

"People start dying."

Amy thought about Josh. About her parents. Even briefly about Dan. She thought about the things that she knew HYDRA was capable of and didn't see an escape for any of them. Her life had no value, but their lives did.

"What will you do with it if I fix it?" she whispered.

"Use it, of course."

"On me?"

"Unnecessary."

"On Bucky?"

"Bucky?"

Amy flinched, realised her mistake, but couldn't correct it.

"Ah. Bucky." Kraus repeated the name. "Is that what you call him?" He leant down in front of Amy. She recoiled when he reached out and stroked her cheek. "Is that the key to unlocking you, Agent Thomas?" Amy started to shake her head, but Kraus grabbed her by the chin. "Your outlook is much too narrow. I am not interested in one assassin, but maybe, when my colleagues have captured him, we will let you work on him."

HYDRA was never going to get hold of Bucky again, Amy had to believe that… had to hope for something.

But, just in case, if they ever did find him. This machine couldn't be here waiting.

Her chair, she realised, had wheels, she used her left leg to push herself over to one of the huge generators. The guard moved to grab her, but Kraus stopped him. Amy forced her body into action, removed a panel from the back of the generator one-handed. It was a mess inside. Looked like something had nested between the mechanisms and nibbled through some of the copper wire.

Perhaps she didn't know how to fix it, but she could figure out how to destroy it. If she could get the generators to start, well, getting them to explode shouldn't be a whole lot harder. She caught her chapped lip between her teeth. The explosion would be… big.

Dying in an explosion. It was messy.

It was the death she had escaped once. There wouldn't be an escape this time. But if she could take Kraus and his threats with her, maybe everyone else would be safe.

Josh. Her parents. Dan.

Bucky.

Amy was just about to reach inside the generator when a hand clamped hard around her wrist.

"Do you think me a fool?"

She gritted her teeth as her arm was bent sharply behind her back.

"You think I am going to let you tinker around inside this thing unsupervised?" asked Kraus.

Well, that was what she'd been hoping, but yes, she could see that her judgement had been slightly impaired by her imprisonment.

"Do I need to make a phone call, Agent Thomas? Joshua's whole class are going on a fieldtrip tomorrow."

"No-!"

The denial was punctuated by a sharp gasp as Kraus twisted her arm a little tighter. Amy felt her gunshot wound reopen.

"I begin to think you are more trouble than you are worth, Agent Thomas."

He threw her down onto the floor. Amy's chin hit the concrete. Blood pooled in her mouth. The guard reached down and grabbed her by the neck, dragged her back up onto her feet.

"Sir!"

A new HYDRA soldier appeared. Amy caught a glimpse of the angry look that Kraus shot in his direction before her damaged leg gave way and she hit the floor for a second time.

Lights flashed in front of her eyes, her hearing started to fade. Unconsciousness beckoned, but she thought she heard the man apologise, "I'm sorry to interrupt, sir, but we're picking up something on radar."


	15. Chapter 15

"You're sure she's here?"

"That's what our best intel indicates."

They were on the West Coast, in a chopper sixty miles southwest of Portland. Steve was passing around his cell phone, so Bucky and Sam could take a last look at the plans of the HYDRA bunker that they were about to infiltrate. Bucky thought he'd been to this facility before, maybe, but the memories were sketchy, and he was finding it harder and harder to concentrate.

He touched his thumb to Amy's cross. Forced his mind to focus. He had her necklace looped three times around his left wrist, concealed under the cuff of his glove. It helped keep him grounded, in substitute of its owner.

"You don't have to do this, you know," said Steve, turning to Bucky. He slipped his phone away. It wasn't the first time they'd had this conversation.

"Yeah, I really do."

Steve claimed none of this was Bucky's fault, and maybe that was true. Bucky didn't actually care. All he cared about was saving Amy.

He wanted to see her wrinkle her nose again. Worry her lip. Wanted to know what else she might attempt to cook. But probably burn. He wanted to feel her touch. Had taken it for granted on so many occasions. He would give anything just to feel that human connection again.

"You're sure you're up to it?" Steve persisted. He was watching his old friend closely. "Sam and I could handle things."

Bucky set his jaw. Hardened his attitude.

"I've spent the last fifty years killing people. I think I'm good for one last mission."

"That's not what worries me."

Bucky stared back at Steve. Because he was pretty sure that was exactly what was worrying his friend. Had a hunch that's why their rescue party consisted of only three people. Just in case he lost it. And forgot how to tell friend from foe.

"It's been ten days now," Steve continued. "She might not be-"

He let the sentence hang unfinished, lost in the whir of the rotor blades, very possibly because Bucky's expression had turned glacier. Sam was refusing to make eye contact with either of them.

"Sorry to interrupt your chitchat, boys, but we just lost the element of surprise." The co-pilot's voice crackled through their earpieces. "We'll sweep low over the beach. They should lose visual. I suggest you still use the storm drain to access the base."

Bucky watched Steve pull on his helmet and grab his shield. He'd been here before too. Watching Captain America suit up. He didn't know who had fished the shield out of the Potomac, but it had been waiting in the helicopter when they'd boarded.

"How low are we talking, Natasha?" Sam asked, checking his gear too. "Because one of us normally needs a parachute when he jumps out of an aircraft."

"Low enough."

Bucky stood up, and pulled open the door. The roar of the wind was incredible. The chopper tilted, diving fast and low over the cliff face. The beach rushed up to meet them. He glanced over his shoulder.

"Well, Steve, you giving the order to go or not?"

..ooOOoo..

There was a sniper covering the entrance to the storm drain, watching the beach from high up on the cliff face. Just the one, as far as they could tell. Miraculously, he hadn't spotted them. Yet. The helicopter had dropped them on the other side of a headland. The three of them were crouched low behind some boulders. Steve and Sam were surveying the area.

Bucky was staring at Steve.

Waiting.

"You know what has to happen," he said, but Steve was busy looking conflicted. Looking for a second angle to a problem that only had one solution.

Bucky decided it was time to spell things out.

"We need that man taken down in one hit and I'm the best shot here."

Steve shook his head.

"I can't ask you to do that."

"You don't have to ask. I volunteer."

He didn't care what happened to him. Didn't care how many sins he added to his already overfull tally. He would rescue Amy. No matter the cost.

There was a slight tremor to his hands as he took aim. He knew he could stop it- if he opened the door on a darker corner of his mind. But that was the part of him that had wanted to kill Steve. The part that had attacked Amy. He didn't know if he could control it without letting it overwhelm him. So he compensated for the tremor instead. Breathed through a pang of guilt, let his bullet fly.

And then there was one less HYDRA soldier in the world.

"Okay, come on."

It was Sam who gave the order. He sounded the most calm and in control. Steve was now looking agonised, while Bucky was struggling to hold a dozen painful memories from rushing to the forefront of his mind.

He grabbed his wrist and tried to fight them. Chased the nightmares away as they ran from their hiding place, across the beach to the entrance to the storm drain.

They entered in a line, Steve at the front, Bucky covering the rear. The drain was about ten foot in diameter. A thin muddy trickle of water was all that it was needed for today. They walked in silence, each man on high alert, each lost in his own thoughts.

Bucky had been expecting the metal grill. It wasn't in the best condition. He and Steve made short work of snapping the rusty bars like dry branches. They reached a service hatch shortly afterwards, and then found themselves in the lower levels of the bunker. It was bleak and bare. Nothing but endless grey corridors and sickly florescent lights.

This was where the prisoners were kept… Bucky thought. He remembered being here. Maybe. Shut in a room? But he had been shut in a lot of rooms. He definitely remembered the pain and the fear. Was that how Amy felt? Trapped and alone. And hurt. He walked the line of cells. Ripping doors off their hinges. Finding the rooms behind empty.

"Where is everyone?" asked Steve. "We should have encountered a guard by now."

"They've got to be a little understaffed since Washington, don't you think?" said Sam.

Bucky had pressed on ahead. So he heard the footsteps first. Regrouped. Managed to grab Sam by the shoulder and push him into a doorway just before the corridor filled with gunfire.

It was almost a relief to have the tension broken.

Because fighting was easy.

Fighting was what his body had been made to do. Though Bucky had rarely fought in anger before. He should have tried it sooner. It was so much simpler to eliminate the enemy if you didn't care about the damage you took to yourself. He used his fists. Mostly. It was more satisfying, and there was at least a chance his opponents would survive, which he knew mattered a great deal to Steve.

It should matter to him too, it would, later, but not right now.

Bucky ploughed through the HYDRA soldiers. Leaving the other two men to clear up the mess that he left behind. He heard Steve call his name. Chose to ignore him.

He had to be getting close.

He reached a fork in the corridor. One way carried on straight, the other led to a flight of stairs. Something tugged at the front of his brain. He pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead in an effort to suppress it.

He didn't want to walk up those steps.

Almost couldn't.

So he knew he had to…

Bucky pushed himself forward. Forced his limbs to move in the one direction that they resisted. There was a door at the top of the stairs. Solid metal. Six inches thick. It stood open. Inviting. He pressed his back against the wall and raised his gun.

He saw Amy a second before he saw the machine.

Which was lucky, because she was the hook that saved his mind.

"Take one more step and I'll shoot her."

Bucky's eyes flicked towards the man. The muzzle of his gun was pressed against the side of Amy's head.

She hadn't looked at him. He didn't know if she could. It was Amy. But there was a spark missing. Like an engine idling in neutral. She was tied to a chair, hands bound behind her back.

Everything in Bucky coiled in barely contained rage.

His mind was turning over like the countdown timer on a bomb.

"I mean it! Drop your weapon."

Bucky refocused on the soldier. He was dressed in a HYDRA guard uniform. And, given the way he was sweating and shaking, he was clearly terrified of the man standing in front of him.

Bucky slowly lowered his gun, although his right index finger remained on the trigger. He held his left hand up in surrender.

He saw it. The moment the guard took a breath and relaxed. The moment he decided to change the direction of his weapon. Swinging it away from his prisoner to aim at the man he knew as the Winter Soldier.

Which was when Bucky fired.

Not at the guard. He didn't give himself away by raising his own weapon. He shot behind himself. He shot at the door. This was what they'd trained him for- to complete his mission no matter the odds. He calculated the ricochet of the bullet perfectly. It hit the man dead between the eyes.

Bucky didn't spare him another thought.

"Amy."

She lifted her head. Just a fraction. It took a second for her eyes to focus. A second more before she seemed to recognise him.

"Bucky?"

Her voice sounded a lot like a death rattle.

But his name on her lips drew him forward. Compelled him deeper into the room, when all his instincts screamed at him to run. The memory of pain made his body twitch, but he still crossed the space that separated him from Amy.

"God, what have they done to you?" he swore, eyes roaming her body and finding more injuries than he dared count.

He moved behind her, used his knife to cut the rope that bound her to the chair and tied her wrists together. It was hard to keep his own hands steady when he saw how the bindings had bruised and broken her skin.

Her eyes followed him as he moved back in front of her.

"Bucky."

She sampled his name again. There was a terrifying rasp to every breath she took. He crouched down in front of her, reached out and gently peeled back the shoulder of her shirt. The bandage that lay underneath was stained with layers of blood.

"Why are you here?" she asked.

"Why do you think?"

"I think you shouldn't have come," she said. So sadly. The words struck like a physical blow. He scowled at her, dared her to continue. She met his gaze, broken but unflinching. "They want you back, Bucky."

"Yeah?" He was in just the right mood for them to try to take him. "That's fine, but they don't get you."

"I can't walk."

"So I'll carry you."

"Bucky, please-"

"Amy," he said. He held the back of her head and pressed his forehead tight against hers, her skin was on fire, but he stared into her eyes and willed her to fight. "I need you not to give up. Okay?"

She was trembling. But she managed to nod her head.

"Okay."

Bucky looked at her, wondered who was relying on who exactly. He would fight all the armies HYDRA could muster, but what was the point- what was he fighting for if he let her give up?

He was just about to lift Amy into his arms when he heard footsteps running up the stairs. He turned. Gun ready.

Nearly shot Steve through the heart.

He lowered his weapon.

"You took your time."

"You found her," said Steve, bursting into the room.

Sam was at his heel. They exchanged a worried glance when they saw the beaten state Amy was in- and the dead man lying on the ground- and the machine that dominated the room. The bank of archaic computers. The chair with its metal restraints.

Steve walked over to Bucky and Amy, leant down, and squeezed Amy's hands. He offered her a small, but reassuring smile. Something Bucky hadn't thought to try.

"Hang in there. We'll get you out."

She wasn't sure how much of this was real. Bucky could see it in her eyes. Eyes that kept turning to him for reassurance.

It was a long time since anyone had needed him so badly. That was Bucky's excuse for missing what happened next. He didn't know what Steve's reason was- but he threw his shield at the slamming door just a second too late to wedge it open. The shield bounced back to his hand, while a harsh metallic clang signalled that the door was locked.

And then an odd hissing started. Gas?

Bucky sniffed the air. There was a strangely sweet odour to it.

Nitrous oxide, maybe?

"You can open that, right?" Sam asked Steve. He nodded at the heavy metal door. "I mean, you can bench press like a couple of ton or something crazy, can't you? So that'll be no problem."

Steve didn't answer. Although he did walk over and try the door. It didn't budge.

Bucky went to help, but the door held firm. A prickly feeling of panic was sending shivers down his spine. He couldn't be here. Trapped here. In this room with that machine.

"What kind of lock is it?" Amy rasped, her breathing was growing more laboured by the second.

"Nice idea, but I doubt we can pick it," said Sam.

"It sounded automated."

Bucky and Steve looked at each other blankly, but Sam seemed to grasp Amy's meaning. The worry in his eyes was overwhelmed with something suspiciously like hope.

"Give me your phone," he said urgently to Steve. "Let's see those plans again."

He grabbed the cell phone and took it to Amy, so she could see the architectural plans of the bunker. It took time for her to find what she was searching for, and all the while the hissing continued.

Eventually, she looked up, at the door, caught her bottom lip between her teeth.

"It's an electromagnetic bolt lock. Fail-safe. Hopefully."

"Why hopefully?" asked Steve.

"It'll unlock. If the power's cut."

"And how do we cut the power from in here?"

"We blow something up," she said.

She tried to turn around, to look behind herself, but her body didn't want to cooperate. Bucky had already worked out what she was thinking. He looked away from the machine that had helped rob him of his life.

"No, Amy."

"Yes, Bucky. Unless you'd rather wait. Pass out. Let HYDRA capture everyone. Kraus would love that I'm sure."

If Kraus was the bastard who had done this to her, Bucky wouldn't mind meeting him. He didn't know how much closer he could get to the machine and stay in control. All this time he had tried to keep as far away from it as possible. But Amy's eyes were more _Amy_ now, cloudy with pain and trauma, and swimming with a lack of oxygen, but capable of reading him.

"You can't give up either, okay? You can't let them in your head today, Bucky." The strength of her voice was fading. "You can't leave me now."

She let him see how scared she was- how wracked with pain- and it killed him.

He took a deep breath, not the wisest idea, but it helped.

"How safe is blowing up that thing while we're trapped in here?" Steve asked.

It seemed to take an inordinate amount of effort, but Amy shifted her gaze from Bucky to him.

"I'll get you guys out. I promise."

"Amy," Bucky growled.

Even Sam smiled sadly.

Steve shook his head and said, "We came to rescue you."

"And I'm very grateful. But no one's rescuing anyone. Not if you don't blow the power, Captain."


	16. Chapter 16

"Okay. Here's the plan," said Steve. All business. All soldier. All Captain America. "Sam, you stick with Amy. Amy, I want you to show Sam how to sabotage that machine. I know you're hurt, so he'll do the work for you. Bucky, you're with me. We're going to build a barricade between that thing and the door."

No one argued. No one dared.

Though Bucky felt like he was being torn in two.

It was the right decision. He knew it was the right decision. Because Steve had made it, so it had to be. But that didn't make it any easier for him to watch another man take his place at Amy's side.

She looked at him. Caught his eye. As difficult as he found it, Bucky nodded his head. He knew she would obey the orders of her captain, but he also knew she wanted his reassurance. That he was still here. Still on board. Still in control.

And he wanted her to know that he was ready to protect her whenever he was needed.

"You can still make this work if we rip up some of this stuff, can't you, Amy?" Steve asked.

She nodded.

"Sam and I only need one of the generators. Use whatever else you want. We'll have to work fast though."

Yes. Because the gas was already starting to have an effect. On Amy, at least. Bucky could hear it in her broken sentences and the slight slur of her words. If she lost consciousness while they were still trapped in this room, they were in a whole new world of trouble.

"So let's get started," said Steve. Sam pushed Amy across the room on her chair and Steve turned his attention to Bucky. "If we can build this barricade in front of the door, it should provide us with some protection from the explosion."

"What are we building it with?"

"There's really only one thing in this room, Bucky."

Yeah…

And he only had to look at it and he felt a pain so deep it made his teeth ache.

So he kept looking at Steve instead.

"You want me to destroy it."

"Are you all right with that?"

In theory? Yes. Of course. But when he actually had to confront the machine that had unpicked his mind and remade him in HYDRA's image? Not so easy. He would rather avoid it completely.

They had no time to waste, so Steve was forced to start working alone. Bucky struggled to pull himself together. He rubbed his hand around his wrist. Found the outline of Amy's necklace under the cuff of his glove. It was so much harder to ground himself here. With that chair sitting in the middle of the room. He could see it even when he refused to look at it. Could feel the shackles around his arms. Around his legs. Feel the panic seeping into his thoughts.

"I'm sorry, Bucky."

The apology caught Bucky off guard. Released him from the prison of his mind. With his body back under his control, he finally moved to help Steve. They ripped one of the computer banks from the bracket that pinned it to the wall. It was absolutely huge, awkward and bulky, but its weight didn't give either man much of a problem.

"I shouldn't have let the door shut," Steve continued, clearly still bothered by his perceived failure.

"It's not all on you, you know."

"Yes, it is, I got distracted."

Steve didn't get distracted in the middle of a mission. It just didn't happen. But he didn't elaborate, and Bucky didn't question him.

Maybe it was due to the gas creeping into his system, but he could recall being seven- or maybe eight- he and Steve had spent one long summer building forts. School was out. Everything was an adventure. And anything had seemed possible.

He looked at the fort that they'd built today. It stood an easy seven feet in height, another four in width. It might make a decent barricade. Might withstand the blast.

"You think that'll hold?" Bucky asked, but it turned out that Steve was still distracted.

"I know what HYDRA did to you," he said, all of a sudden, staring at his hands, at the floor, finally managing to lift his head to meet Bucky's eyes. "But knowing it, and seeing it- it's not the same."

Ah.

This wasn't really _it_. This was a very small part of _it_. But Steve didn't need to be told that, because acting as his friend's protector had been a role that Bucky had assumed way back sometime long before his memory began.

"What happened to me, that's not your fault either, Steve," he said, slowly, carefully. "You know that, right?"

"You were on that train because of me."

"I was on that train because it was where I wanted to be."

And he had already met Zola by then anyway.

Steve didn't seem convinced. But that was something Bucky could work on. Later. Once they got out of this current disaster. They didn't both need to be completely messed up. But Bucky could take up the slack for Steve for a few minutes at least.

"You finished yet, Amy?" he called across the room.

"Think so."

It was Sam who replied. Bucky had tried to keep half an eye on Amy the whole time that he'd been working, but now he gave her his full attention. Walked across the room, Steve followed.

Amy could barely keep her eyes open. Sam was starting to sway too. He was using the back of Amy's chair to lean against.

"You've done everything you need to?" Steve asked.

Bucky was aware that Amy nodded, but he was more aware that her breathing was too fast and much too shallow. He crouched down in front of her, tugged off his right glove, and used his hand to frame her face. She turned into his touch.

"You think you can try to breathe a little slower?"

"Am trying."

He brushed her hair out of her eyes.

"Try harder?"

A croak of laughter escaped her lips.

"S'okay. Sam's set everything up. Just need to turn it on now."

"That would be the dangerous part?" Steve asked.

"Yes."

"I'll do it," said Bucky, standing back up.

It was no easier to confront the machine now. It was harder, perhaps. Because now it was twisted and broken into pieces. Like something deformed. Warped too, by the association it now held with everyone in this room.

But if anyone was going to flip that switch it should be him.

And more importantly, if anyone was going to die doing so, it would be him.

"No."

Steve and Amy spoke at the same time.

They looked at each other.

Looked at him.

Amy was first to continue.

"Come on, guys. You're only here because of me."

"No way is it going to be you, Amy," said Bucky.

Of course she would want to volunteer for the job. Of course she would. Because she had no regard whatsoever for her own life. But he hadn't come all this way to watch her die.

"You can't make that decision for me."

"Sure I can," he said.

Amy dragged herself up a little straighter. Eyes narrowed. Breath hitching. But before she had gathered the strength to fire whatever barb she was preparing for Bucky, Steve stepped in to support him.

"Bucky's right," he said. "None of us would let you do it, Amy." He lifted his shield. "Will the explosion be instant?"

Amy turned to Sam for help. He offered her a small shrug of sympathy, and the spark of anger that Bucky had kindled seemed to be extinguished by confusion. She shook her head and tried to answer Steve's question.

"Might be a small delay. But we're only talking seconds."

Bucky caught Steve's eye. Seconds would do. For the super soldier and his shield.

"It should be me, Steve."

"I know why you think that, but you came here for Amy."

True. Bucky saw her glance at him. Glance away again the moment their eyes met. But destroying that machine would save Amy. Might save him too. And he would trust Steve with Amy's life. If he had to- if he wasn't there to guard it himself. He didn't want to… but he couldn't do everything. So he had to choose. Destroy or protect?

He didn't know.

But Steve took Bucky's silence for agreement with his intentions.

"Look after them, okay?" he said.

Bucky opened his mouth. Prepared to argue, until he felt the lightest tug on his sleeve. Amy's fingers caught the material with all the strength of a kitten, but there was steel in her eyes. He had stopped her risking her life for them, and she demanded that he return the favour.

"I'll see you on the other side," said Steve, watching the subtle interplay.

"You'd better," Bucky replied slowly, falling into line. He watched Steve take up position by the generator, and then he crouched down beside Amy again. He lightly touched her leg, seeking her permission to continue. "Want to tell me how I pick you up without it hurting?"

"Don't worry. Everything hurts anyway."

Not what he wanted to hear. He slipped one arm under her knees, wrapped the other around her back, and tried not to think about the way she buried her head in his shoulder to smother a moan of pain.

Bucky carried Amy to the other side of the barricade. Sam stumbled along at his side. The three of them hunkered down on the ground behind the wall of computers, and braced themselves for what was to come.

"Ready?" Steve called to them.

"Ready."

One and three quarter seconds. That was the time lag between Steve hitting the switch and the room exploding.

There was a burst of light and heat. And then a punch of sound. They were all pushed forward by the force of it. Bucky covered Amy with his body, made sure to use his arm as a shield across her head. She was shaking, uncontrollably. But she found his right hand, and held on tight, nails scoring his skin.

He didn't want to imagine what she was thinking.

Remembering.

So he held her closer. And somehow that kept his own demons at bay. It was the destruction of part of his past that had them pinned to the ground, but he couldn't afford to lose himself now.

Debris flew everywhere, something struck Bucky's shoulder, and something else hit him hard in the back. He gritted his teeth and pressed himself closer to Amy. Steve arrived with a grunt at his side. More wreckage pinged off the shield.

And then the lights died.

"Door!" Sam yelled. "Before the backup generator kicks in!"

Steve and Sam scrambled to their feet. They could see by the light of the fire that was consuming what remained of the machine. Bucky gathered Amy back into his arms. He hated the way she gasped and whimpered, although he couldn't hate the way she clung to him.

Steve reached the door first. Bucky saw the handle turn, heard the hinges give, as the door swung open. He followed behind Sam. Stepped out into the corridor and took a deep breath of clean air.

The lights flickered, and then the power kicked in again. Several florescent tubes had blown in the power surge, making the shadows that filled the corridor longer, the light weaker and more eerie.

"So. That worked. Can we please get the hell out of here now?" asked Sam, dusting himself off, as he too breathed the purer air.

"That's the idea," said Steve. He was a little battered, a little bruised, but nothing worse.

Indestructible Steve was still something that Bucky had to get used to… But they'd all escaped the explosion with only the lightest injuries. New injuries, at any rate.

Bucky glanced down into Amy's ashen face.

"Let's not do that again," she said, although even her breathing was easing a fraction.

Bucky hoisted her higher, cradled her against his chest. Aware that it was completely wrong of him to enjoy feeling the weight of her in his arms, wrong to savour the way she curled into his body.

"Let's go," he said.

Steve took up the lead, but this time Sam covered the rear. They moved quickly and silently, heading for the access tunnel that led out of the bunker and up to the surface.

They were drawing close. Perhaps only a few hundred yards from the exit, when they were met by a flurry of grenades. Steve fielded two, but the third detonated before he could knock it out of range. The aftershock from the blast sent all of them crashing to the ground.

Bucky used his body to soften the blow for Amy. He hit the ground first, and then rolled her under him. Pain tore through him. Everywhere. But when he opened his eyes, he found her staring back at him. Her gaze was wide, and there was just the faintest hint of colour in her pale cheeks.

"Please stop doing that," she said, gently touching her fingers to a fresh cut on his temple.

"No."

Wincing, Bucky pulled back, checked that Steve and Sam were all right.

They were moving, so at least they were alive.

"You have destroyed my workshop." A cultured voice filled the corridor. Its tone void of emotion. "But you have at least returned a piece of our property to us."

Steve and Sam were looking towards the sound of the voice. Bucky was looking at Amy. She was holding her breath. Trembling. Had bitten her lip so hard it was bleeding.

He spoke her name.

Her eyes found his face.

"Kraus."

Bucky finally turned his head towards the man who had appeared. He didn't think he recognised him, but Kraus was flanked by a dozen HYDRA soldiers.

"He did this to you?"

Amy didn't answer.

Didn't have to answer.

"I've got her, Barnes," said Sam. His leg must have been injured in the explosion, because he dragged himself over to Bucky and Amy. He pulled his gun when he reached them. "Do what you've got to do."

"Bucky, wait-!"

Amy grabbed his wrist, but he uncurled her fingers and pushed himself onto his feet.

Steve was getting up too.

"Do you have any idea of the damage that you have caused?" asked Kraus.

"I can't say that particularly concerns me, sir," said Steve. He flexed the arm that was carrying his shield. "Have you come to surrender?"

"Surrender, Captain Rogers?" Kraus laughed. "No. HYDRA does not surrender. You should know that by now. We will fight to the last man."

One or two of the men behind him looked a little less keen on that idea, but they were the ones who stepped forward and opened fire.

Steve took two of them out with one throw of his shield. Bucky neutralised another three. The flash of his knife, and the crack of bone beneath his fist was immensely satisfying.

It wasn't the prettiest fight, but it was effectively brutal. Bucky had no time to waste on technique today. A mistake, really. He was so preoccupied with attack that he forgot about defence. One stray bullet grazed his right arm, another caught his left calf. But pain was an inconvenience that he had been conditioned to ignore.

He rolled his metal arm. Harnessed the power, literally, at his fingertips, and unleashed it on the remaining soldiers. By the time he and Steve stopped, there were only three men standing. The two of them, and Kraus.

"Now, about your surrender," said Steve, swinging his shield onto his back.

No.

This man did not deserve the luxury of surrender.

Bucky stepped over the men lying on the ground, groaning and whimpering at his feet.

"Stop, Bucky," Steve commanded, but Bucky didn't think he was going to be able to obey.

He walked towards Kraus.

Saw the grenade in his hand. Dared him to pull the pin.

"It would seem you have malfunctioned, soldier." Kraus smiled. Bucky's lip curled, his fists clenched. "And a broken weapon has no purpose."

The crack of a gunshot filled the corridor.

Bucky froze instantly. He saw the surprise register on Kraus's face. Surprise that he shared. Kraus looked down at his shirt, at the blood that was blooming over the left side of his chest. He staggered. The grenade dropped from his fingers. Hit the floor, harmlessly.

He spluttered, blood foaming at the corners of his mouth.

"Hail HY-"

And then he fell down.

Dead.

Bucky turned around. So did Steve.

Amy was on her feet, well no, one foot, all her weight supported by the wall that she was leaning against, falling against, her left arm was needed to steady her right hand, which still clasp the handgun.

Sam's gun.

Sam who sat at her feet looking stunned.

"S-sorry, Captain," she said, apologising to Steve.

But it was Bucky who marched back towards her.

Ripped the gun from her fingers. Furious.

"Why?"

"Steve told you to- to stop."

Amy licked her lips. Stumbled. Bucky caught her. Wrapped his arms around her waist and held her upright. His touch was gentle, but his gaze was unforgiving.

"S'better this way," she persisted, eyes losing focus.

"_Why_, Amy?"

"Kraus is- is my burden."

Bucky blinked slowly. He could remember her pressing a palm against his chest. Telling him he had a heart. He finally believed her. Because it felt like it was breaking.

"He didn't have to be."

"I know," Amy said. She managed a small smile, in the moment before she lost her battle to stay conscious.


	17. Chapter 17

Hey guys, I'm off on holiday tomorrow (yay!), but that does mean it'll probably be around another two weeks before the next update. Sorry! I tried to get everything finished before I left, but I ran out of time. ^^;

* * *

Amy woke up slowly. She recognised the antiseptic smell of the hospital. Along with all the sounds that filled it. Doctors and nurses talking in the distance. The steady beeping of machines. The roll of a trolley being pushed down a corridor. She even recognised the scratchy feel of the hospital gown that she was wearing.

What was less familiar was the rhythmic sensation of someone stroking their thumb back and forth across the knuckles of her right hand. She flexed her fingers, and the rhythm was broken.

"Amy?"

She knew that voice. The low masculine cadence breathed life into her name. Her heart fluttered against her ribs. She heard a chair being pushed back, and then the mattress that she was lying on shifted slightly, as though someone had just leant their weight against it.

Bucky.

His face was the first thing she saw when she managed to open her eyes. But she'd never seen him look at her like this before. Maybe no one had ever looked at her like this before? Because she couldn't describe the emotion in his eyes. So she concentrated on what she could understand instead.

He was here. With her. And they were safe?

"Say something, Amy."

That was desperation.

She was better acquainted with that emotion.

"Sorry."

Her voice sounded strange to her own ears. Dry with disuse. Bucky breathed out- part heavy sigh, part ragged laugh. He dragged a hand through his hair. It looked like he'd been doing that a lot.

"Something else, Amy."

"Thank you?"

His slow frown made her want to reach up and stroke away the line that had appeared between his eyes, but her arm felt too heavy to lift.

"Try again," he said. "How do you feel?"

Amy took a moment to consider the question. Her head felt rather woolly, in fact, her thoughts were so sluggish that they kept bumping into each other. She could sense the deep, dark, shadows gathering at the corners of her mind, but nothing hurt at the moment, and that was pure bliss.

"Thirsty."

Bucky moved away from the bed. Had Amy been able to follow fast enough, she would have reached out to stop him. But he didn't go far, simply to a pitcher of water to fetch her a glass.

It appeared she had her own private room.

"I should let a doctor know you're awake."

No. Not yet. She just wanted him.

"I feel okay."

"Really?" He glanced at her, one eyebrow raised. "That'll be the morphine."

Amy cast her eyes to the other side of her bed and spotted the drip, and then the medical monitor that beeped away beside it. She was hooked up to both. Oh. Okay. She made a concerted effort to check she could move. Parts of her body protested, but nothing outright refused.

What, exactly, had happened to her again?

Her heart rate started to pick up and the beeping sound intensified. It was all slowly sliding back into focus. HYDRA. The bunker. That cell. She struggled to sit up.

"Hey, easy."

Bucky put her glass of water down on the table by her bed and pressed his hand against her shoulder. The shoulder that wasn't heavily strapped. They'd shot her, hadn't they?

"Want me to get that doctor now?" he asked, searching her face.

Amy shook her head.

"Drink first, please."

He looked like he wanted to ignore her request, but in the end he helped her sit up, which Amy's body took as an invitation to let her pulse run even wilder. The pressure of Bucky's hands on her waist was a brand, searing her skin through the thin hospital robe. She saw him watching the monitor over her shoulder, but he didn't say anything, simply held the glass to her lips so she could sip the water.

She drank her fill and thanked him quietly.

"Can you stop doing that, Amy?"

Confused, and maybe a little bit concerned, she raised her eyes to his face.

"Stop doing what?"

"Thanking me."

"No." Of course not. She frowned. "You saved my life."

For the second time.

"Is that how you remember it?"

Amy licked her lips. Yes. Pretty much. But… Something was telling her not to examine her memories too closely. She twisted her fingers in the white bed sheet. A feeling of dread settled in the pit of her stomach.

"I killed him, didn't I?"

Memories returned in vivid flashes. Memories full of pain and fear. And murder. She dropped her gaze to her lap, but Bucky wouldn't let her hide. He lifted her chin with his fingers. The gentle touch was completely at odds with the hard look in his eyes.

"He deserved to die for what he did to you."

"That wasn't why-" Amy broke off, a flash jolting through her brain. "Josh."

"What?"

"He threatened Josh." She tugged on Bucky's arm. "You've got to check he's all right."

But maybe it was already too late? How long had she been lying here?

"Josh? The kid who lives next door to you?"

"Yes!"

"It's taken care of, Amy," said Bucky.

She didn't understand how that could be, but she sank back into her pillows, hoping he was right, already worn out from the effort of sitting upright.

"Steve went back to the bunker to see if he could find out anything new about HYDRA. He searched through the files in Kraus's office," said Bucky. Amy listened, unnerved by the blank way he'd suddenly decided to stare at the floor. "Your parents are fine too. And Dan. Steve's got them all under surveillance, but it doesn't look like Kraus had reached the point of setting anything in motion."

Some of the dark clouds hovering in Amy's periphery lifted. She breathed a sigh of relief, finally realised that she was actually able to breathe without it taking a monumental effort.

"That was good of him," she said.

But then that was Steve. She wondered if he would also be good enough to forgive her for killing Kraus in a direct violation of his orders. Did you get sent to jail for killing sadistic bastards from HYDRA? She wasn't sure. She didn't appear to be handcuffed to her hospital bed, and, somehow, Bucky was right here with her, so maybe not.

"What's wrong?"

"What happened after I blacked out?" she asked, dodging the question. "You all got out okay? Sam was hurt, wasn't he?"

"Just a cracked femur."

Leg injuries made Amy squeamish.

"You could sound a bit more sympathetic," she said.

"Sam doesn't need my sympathy when he's the one who actually deserves all your thanks."

Amy didn't follow. And Bucky was refusing to look at her again.

"How do you work that out?"

He tried to move away, but Amy curled her fingers in his sleeve. No way was she strong enough to hold him, but he stopped. The look he finally gave her was shot through with such pain that it reverberated through Amy's body.

"Talk to me, Bucky."

"It was Sam who wanted to visit you. Who made us stop by your house. If he hadn't-" Bucky broke off. "If he hadn't-" but he couldn't finish that sentence.

It hurt. Just a little. Okay. Just a lot. But it was no worse than what Amy had expected. She realised her fingers were still knotted in his sleeve. She let go, ready to make her retreat and recapture some crumbs of dignity, only he caught hold of her hand.

Amy blinked, and studied their entwined fingers thoughtfully.

"You put yourself to an awful lot of trouble for someone you didn't want to see again."

"I didn't say I didn't want to see you. I just thought you'd be better off if I stayed away." Bucky paused. The frown was back. But more than that, there was a curious, wounded look in his eyes. "You told me I shouldn't have come for you."

Yes, Amy remembered that, but she'd only said it because she'd been more afraid for him than she had been for herself. She should have had more faith. He was much stronger now than he had been before- more capable, more self-assured, more present…

She wondered if that meant Steve had already helped Bucky find all the answers that he'd been looking for when they'd parted ways? But if that was the case, surely he shouldn't still feel so much like _her_ Bucky?

"I guess that means we were both wrong," she said eventually.

"Were we?"

"I was," said Amy. "I thought I was the one helping you."

"You were- you are."

She shook her head, forced a bitter smile.

"Look at me, Bucky. I'm a wreck."

No. She was an idiot. Because he looked, and she knew he saw it.

All of it. Every shadowy fear and twisted nightmare. Every lonely moment of futile anger.

But he didn't say anything. He simply moved his hand to touch her face, stroking his thumb against her cheek. She raised her eyebrows in question, but even as she did that she felt her bottom lip start to wobble.

No. Oh, no. No. No. No.

She couldn't-

She hadn't meant-

Amy squeezed her eyes shut. Trying to hold back the tears that were suddenly burning the backs of her eyes. She never cried. Because what was the point? It didn't solve anything. Of course, she never really solved anything anyway, but no one was supposed to see that- so what was Bucky playing at?

Because as much as she might like this new compulsion of his to touch her, it was helping to breach all of her carefully constructed defences.

"Don't- Bucky, please don't-"

"Why not?"

"Because if I fall to pieces, I won't- I don't know how to-"

"I'll put you back together."

Amy's body started to shake. And then the tears started falling, fast and fierce, and unstoppable. Bucky sat on the edge of her bed. Pulled her into his arms, and held her against his chest. In spite of the drip in her arm, and the wires hooking her up to the monitor, in spite of the fact that she shouldn't want this at all, Amy wrapped her own arms tight around his waist.

"I thought I was going to die." She choked out the confession. Felt the answering shudder that passed through Bucky's powerful body. Felt the way his arms locked. "I didn't think I cared." She'd even managed to lie to herself. "But then you came for me, and I knew I wanted to live."

Amy would never know for sure, but she thought it was the pressure of his lips that she felt brush against the top of her head. She coiled her fingers a little tighter in the fabric of his shirt and pressed herself even closer. No one had held her like this for a very long time, and she was in very real danger of liking it far too much.

She had always been able to rely on herself. Only on herself. But now she knew there was a limit. There were only so many knocks she could take- only so many times she could hit the ground- before she needed help getting up.

His help.

She hiccupped a few times, once her tears eventually ran dry. Dazed, Amy leant her head against Bucky's shoulder and tried to catch her breath. She could feel the interplay of muscle and metal under her cheek, and if she lifted her eyes she could watch the pulse that beat at the base of his throat.

There was no reason why those things should steal her breath all over again.

But they did.

She couldn't hide in his arms forever however, although Bucky seemed in no hurry to make her move. She would have to choose the moment to leave herself.

Amy sighed and sniffed and lifted her head. Again, she found it impossible to read Bucky's expression, but she was sure her own acute embarrassment wasn't so well disguised. She dashed a hand across her face, and eyed his wet shirt guiltily.

"Don't say sorry."

His warning was swift and firm.

She wanted to- God, how she wanted to apologise.

"I was going to blame it on the cocktail of drugs that the hospital's pumped into me."

She couldn't meet his eyes, but she was toying with one of his shirt buttons.

Physically and emotionally exhausted, Amy had started to notice the dull ache that ran from her right ankle to her thigh. Realised her lower leg was in plaster, and her knee was swathed in bandages.

"I broke my leg again, didn't I?" she asked, her voice small.

She waited for the answer, still staring at Bucky's chest.

"They had to operate."

"Oh."

So that would be another patchwork of scars.

"You needed a new plate and pins to support the bone, but you also got a new knee." His tone was gently probing, "They said your old one looked like it had been put together with Meccano. Why'd you never get it fixed, Amy?"

Five minutes ago, she would have made some throwaway comment about being surprised that he knew what Meccano was- and if he'd continued to press, she would have deflected the question by claiming that the expense of surgery had made it impossible. She couldn't do that anymore. He had stripped her of all artifice.

She found the strength to lift her eyes, or maybe it wasn't as simple as finding the strength, maybe it was Bucky who gave it to her?

"Two of us came home from Iraq. But I was the only one with any hope of walking. I didn't have to feel so guilty about that if every step I took hurt like hell."

Bucky looked pained by her confession, but he was the one demanding her secrets.

"You've got to stop punishing yourself for things that aren't your fault."

"And I take it you've learnt that lesson since I saw you last?" she asked, guessing what the answer would be.

"It's not the same, Amy."

"It's not so different."


End file.
